Quote collection
966 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"A day will come when all nations on our continent will form a European brotherhood... A day will come when we shall see... the United States of America and the United States of Europe face to face, reaching out for each other across the seas."
"Curiosity is gluttony. To see is to devour."
"I have examined the death penalty under each of its two aspects: as a direct action, and as an indirect one. What does it come down to? Nothing but something horrible and useless, nothing but a way of shedding blood that is called a crime when an individual commits it, but is sadly called "justice" when society brings it about. Make no mistake, you lawmakers and judges, in the eyes of God as in those of conscience, what is a crime when individuals do it is no less an offense when society commits the deed."
"It is the essence of truth that it is never excessive.... We must not resort to the flame where only light is required."
"Smallness in a great man seems smaller by its disproportion with all the rest."
"To a gargoyle on the ramparts of Notre Dame as Esmeralda rides off with Gringoire Quasimodo says. "Why was I not made of stone like thee?"
"Knowledge is a weight added to conscience."
"Almost all our desires, when examined, contain something too shameful to reveal."
"What a gloomy thing, not to know the address of one's soul."
"Society is a republic. When an individual tries to lift themselves above others, they are dragged down by the mass, either by ridicule or slander."
"The man who does not know other languages, unless he is a man of genius, necessarily has deficiencies in his ideas."
"Whatever causes night in our souls may leave stars."
"One is not idle because one is absorbed. There is both visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil, to think is to do. The crossed arms work, the clasped hands act. The eyes upturned to Heaven are an act of creation."
"You ask me what forces me to speak? a strange thing; my conscience."
"Love is the only future God offers."
"Nature is pitiless; she never withdraws her flowers, her music, her fragrance, and her sunlight from before human cruelty or suffering."
"A library implies an act of faith."
"One can no more keep the mind from returning to an idea than the sea from returning to a shore. For a sailor, this is called the tide; in the case of the guilty it is called remorse. God stirs up the soul as well as the ocean."
"Indigestion is charged by God with enforcing morality on the stomach."
"The poor man shuddered, overflowed with an angelic joy; he declared in his transport that this would last through life; he said to himself that he really had not suffered enough to deserve such radiant happiness, and he thanked God, in the depths of his soul, for having permitted that he, a miserable man, should be so loved by this innocent being."