Quote collection
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"Despots play their part in the works of thinkers. Fettered words are terrible words. The writer doubles and trebles the power of his writing when a ruler imposes silence on the people. Something emerges from that enforced silence, a mysterious fullness which filters through and becomes steely in the thought."
"A war between Europeans is a civil war."
"The clouds, - the only birds that never sleep."
"To put everything in balance is good, to put everything in harmony is better."
"Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees."
"Was it possible that Napoleon should win the battle of Waterloo? We answer, No! Why? Because of Wellington? Because of Blucher? No! Because of God! For Bonaparte to conquer at Waterloo was not the law of the nineteenth century. It was time that this vast man should fall. He had been impeached before the Infinite! He had vexed God! Waterloo was not a battle. It was the change of front of the Universe!"
"Life is a theatre set in which there are but few practicable entrances."
"Love has no middle term; either it destroys, or it saves. All human destiny is this dilemma. This dilemma, destruction or salvation, no fate proposes more inexorably than love. Love is life, if it is not death. Cradle; coffin, too. The same sentiment says yes and no in the human heart. Of all the things God has made, the human heart is the one that sheds most light, and alas! most night."
"The most powerful symptom of love is a tenderness which becomes at times almost insupportable."
"Reaction - a boat which is going against the current but which does not prevent the river from flowing on."
"Nothing is so stifling as symmetry. Symmetry is boredom, the quintessence of mourning. Despair yawns. There is something more terrible than a hell of suffering - a hell of boredom."
"She had had sweet dreams, which possibly arose from the fact that her little bed was very white."
"...The girls chirped and chatted like uncaged warblers. They were delirious with joy... Intoxications of life’s morning! Enchanted years! The wing of a dragonfly trembles! Oh, reader, whoever you may be, do you have such memories? Have you walked in the underbrush, pushing aside branches for the charming head behind you? Have you slid laughing, down some slope wet with rain, with the woman you loved?"
"My misfortune is that I still resemble a man too much. I should liked to be wholly a beast like that goat. - Quasimodo"
"Ah! There you are! he exclaimed, looking at Jean Valjean. I'm so glad to see you. Well, but how is this? I gave you the candlesticks too, which are of silver like the rest, and for which you can certainly get two hundred francs. Why did you not carry them away with your forks and spoons?"
"Out Milky Way is the dwelling; the nebulae are the city."
"If you look in the eyes of the young, you see flame. If you look in the eyes of the old, you see light."
"He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two."
"It is not enough to be happy, one must be content."
"Labor is life; thought is light."