In this tableau of the stage, each figure must be held down to its most prominent, most individual, most precisely defined characteristic.

Even the vulgar and the trivial should have an accent of their own.

Like God, the true poet is present in every part of his work at once.

Genius resembles the die which stamps the king's effigy on copper and golden coins alike.
We do not hesitate--and this will demonstrate once more to honest men how far we are from seeking to discredit the art--we do not hesitate to consider verse as one of the means best adapted to protect the drama from the scourge we have just mentioned, as one of the most powerful dams against the irruption of the commonplace, which, like democracy, is always flowing between full banks in men's minds.

And at this point we beg the younger literary generation, already so rich in men and in works, to allow us to point out an error into which it seems to have fallen--an error too fully justified, indeed, by the extraordinary aberrations of the old school.