Displaying Top 10 Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve quotes

Our Biography page will tell you more about Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

Most often we are judging not others, but rather our own faculties in others.

Œuvres choisies - 1934 Andrew George Lehmann Sainte-Beuve - 1962.


Since it is necessary to have enemies, let us endeavour to have those who do us honour.

Derniers portraits littéraires - 1852; Paris: Didier, 1858) translated by W. Fraser Rae, in Sainte-Beuve English Portraits - London: Dalby, Isbister, 1875.


A philosophical thought has probably not attained all its sharpness and all its illumination until it is expressed in French.

Society for Pure English, Tract 5 The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems Author: Society for Pure English - June 5, 2004.


Despair itself if it goes on long enough, can become a kind of sanctuary in which one settles down and feels at ease.

"Vie de Joseph Delorme - 1829, cited from Poésies completes de Sainte-Beuve - Paris: Charpentier, 1840 - Mardy Grothe Oxymoronica - 2004.


Silence is the sovereign contempt.

Pensées et maximes - 1954 Nicholas Rescher Communicative Pragmatism and Other Philosophical Essays on Language - 1998.


Misattributed: Injustice - is a mother who is never barren, and bears children worthy of her.

Causeries du lundi - 1857 - volume 1; E. J. Trechmann, translator Causeries du Lundi - George Routledge, 1909 - volume 1.


To lend freshness to things known, to spread knowledge of things new; an excellent program for a critic.

Causeries du lundi, volume 11 - 1856; Paris: Garnier, 1868 Philo M. Buck, Jr. Literary Criticism - 1930.


Let us beware of irony when making judgements. Of all the dispositions of the mind, irony is the least intelligent.

Notebook entry, February 24, 1848, cited from Les cahiers de Sainte-Beuve - Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, 1876 - Christopher Prendergast The Classic - 2007.