“The women laughed and wept; the crowd stamped their feet enthusiastically, for at that moment Quasimodo was really beautiful. He was handsome – this orphan, this foundling, this outcast.”
— Victor Hugo
“If God had intended that man should go backward, he would have given him eyes in the back of his head.”
“We see past time in a telescope and present time in a microscope. Hence the apparent enormities of the present.”
“Puns are the droppings of soaring wits.”
“My day’s work will begin again the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley.”
“There are moments when a rope’s end, a pole, the branch of the tree, is life itself, and it is a frightful thing to see a living being lose his hold upon it, and fall like a ripe fruit.”
“His judgement demonstrates that one can be a genius and understand nothing of an art that is not one’s own.”
“The omnipotence of evil has never resulted in anything but fruitless efforts. Our thoughts always escape from whoever tries to smother them.”
“Take all reasonable advantage of that which the present may offer you. It is the only time which is ours. Yesterday is buried forever, and to-morrow we may never see.”
“It is ourselves we have to fear. Prejudice is the real robber, and vice the real murderer.”
“The aim of art is almost divine: to bring to life again if it is writing history, to create if it is writing poetry.”
“God was bored by him.”
“Social prosperity means man happy, the citizen free, the nation great.”
“A creditor is worse than a slave-owner; for the master owns only your person, but a creditor owns your dignity, and can command it.”
“The production of souls is the secret of unfathomable depth.”
“Daring is the price of progress. All splendid conquests are the prize of boldness, more or less.”
“A shadow is hard to seize by the throat and dash to the ground.”
“The last resort of kings, the cannonball. The last resort of the people, the paving stone.”
“To meditate is to labour; to think is to act.”
“Whenever a man’s friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old.”
“The supreme ordeal, let us say rather, the only ordeal, is the loss of the beloved being.”
“I think, therefore I doubt.”
“There shall be no slavery of the mind.”
“The beautiful has but one type, the ugly has a thousand.”
“Is it not a thing divine to have a smile which, none know how, has the power to lighten the weight of that enormous chain which all the living in common drag behind them?”
“Let us say it now: to be blind and to be loved, is indeed, upon this earth where nothing is complete, one of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness.”
“That is to be two and to be but one. A man and a woman mingled into one angel. It is heaven.”
“It is the peculiarity of grief to bring out the childish side of man.”
“I believe in religion against the religious; in the pitifulness of orisons, and in the sublimity of prayer.”
“The hatred of luxury is not an intelligent hatred. It implies a hatred of arts.”
“A cannonball travels only two thousand miles an hour; light travels two hundred thousand miles a second. Such is the superiority of Jesus Christ over Napoleon.”
“To see so much misery everywhere, I suspect that God is not rich. He keeps up appearances, it is true, but I feel the pinch. He gives a revolution as a merchant, whose credit is low, gives a ball.”
“The memory of an absent person shines in the deepest recesses of the heart, shining the more brightly the more wholly its object has vanished: a light on the horizon of the despairing, darkened spirit; a star gleaming in our inward night.”
“Thus, during those nineteen years of torture and slavery, did this soul rise and fall at the same time. Light entered on the one side, and darkness on the other.”
“A day will come when there will be no battlefields, but markets opening to commerce and minds opening to ideas.”
“I refuse the oration of all churches. I ask a prayer of all souls. I believe in God.”
“God put in man thought; society, action; nature, revery.”
“The peasants of the Asturias believe that in every litter of wolves there is one pup that is killed by the mother for fear that on growing up it would devour the other little ones.”
“A woman’s best qualities are harmful if undiluted with prudence.”
“The onward march of the human race requires that the heights around it constantly blaze with noble lessons of courage. Deeds of daring dazzle history and form one of man’s guiding lights.”
“He would give all of his clothes to his servant, admonishing him NOT to return them until he had completed his day’s work.”
“Great griefs exhaust. They discourage us with life. The man into whom they enter feels something taken from him. In youth, their visit is sad; later on, it is ominous.”
“Idleness is a mother. She has a son, robbery, and a daughter, hunger.”
“I like the laughter that opens the lips and the heart, shows at the same time the pearls and the soul.”
“Proverty and wealth are comparative sins.”
“What is called honors and dignities, and even honor and dignity, is generally fool’s gold.”
“In every cradle decked with rosy wreath Lurk germs of death.”
“Profound hearts, wise minds, take life as God makes it; it is a long trial, and unintelligible preparation for the unknown destiny.”
“There is no rapture in the love which is prompted by esteem; such affection is lasting, not passionate.”
“Sleep comes more easily than it returns.”
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