Jovens de letras, meus amigos, ponde vossos olhos neste exemplo de ouro! Sê prudente, mancebo; nunca, ao entrar na carreira literária, publiques poem… - José Maria de Eça de Queirós

My friends, young men of letters, look carefully upon this golden example! Be prudent, young man; never, when entering upon a literary career, publish poem or story without first taking the precaution of being for some years Prime Minister of England.

The Englishman falls on the ideas and customs of other nations like a lump of granite in the water: and there he stays, a weighty encumbrance, with his Bible, his sports and his prejudices, his etiquette and selfishness – completely unaccommodating to those among whom he lives. That is why he remains, in the countries where he has lived for centuries, a foreigner.

Superior forms of thought have a fatal tendency of later becoming revealed law: and all philosophy ends, in its last stages, by becoming religion.