Background Image

...

In 1815, M. Charles Francois-bienvenu Myriel Was Bishop Of D-----. He Was A Man Of Seventy-five, And Had Occupied The Bishopric Of D----- Since 1806. Although It In No Manner Concerns, Even In The Remotest Degree, What We Have To Relate, It May Not Be Useless, Were It Only For The Sake Of Exactness In All Things, To Notice Here The Reports And Gossip Which Had Arisen On His Account From The Time Of His Arrival In The Diocese.

-Victor Hugo

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

In 1815, M. Charles

Victor Hugo

...

In 1815, M. Charles Francois-bienvenu Myriel Was Bishop Of D-----. He Was A Man Of Seventy-five, And Had Occupied The Bishopric Of D----- Since 1806. Although It In No Manner Concerns, Even In The Remotest Degree, What We Have To Relate, It May Not Be Useless, Were It Only For The Sake Of Exactness In All Things, To Notice Here The Reports And Gossip Which Had Arisen On His Account From The Time Of His Arrival In The Diocese.

Views: 7

Topic

More From Victor Hugo

Sorrow Is A Fruit. God Does Not Make It Grow On Limbs Too Weak To Bear It.

He Caught Her, She Fell, He Caught Her In His Arms, He Held Her Tightly Unconscious Of What He Was Doing. He Held Her Up, Though Tottering Himself. He Felt As If His Head Were Filled With Smoke; Flashes Of Light Slipped Through His Eyelids; His Thoughts Vanished; It Seemed To Him That He Was Performing A Religious Act, And That He Was Committing A Profanation. Moreover, He Did Not Feel One Passionate Desire For This Ravishing Woman, Whose Form He Felt Against His Heart. He Was Lost In Love.

It Seems As Though, At The Approach Of A Certain Dark Hour, The Light Of Heaven Infills Those Who Are Leaving The Light Of Earth.

Without Vanity, Without Coquetry, Without Curiosity, In A Word, Without The Fall, Woman Would Not Be Woman. Much Of Her Grace Is In Her Frailty.

Nothing Discernible To The Eye Of The Spirit Is More Brilliant Or Obscure Than Man; Nothing Is More Formidable, Complex, Mysterious, And Infinite. There Is A Prospect Greater Than The Sea, And It Is The Sky; There Is A Prospect Greater Than The Sky, And It Is The Human Soul.

If I Have Not Been Exposed And Am Not In Any Danger Of Pursuit. But I Have Been Exposed, I Am Pursued - By Myself! That Is A Pursuer That Does Not Readily Let Go.

Certain Thoughts Are Prayers. There Are Moments When, Whatever Be The Attitude Of The Body, The Soul Is On Its Knees.

Why Worry About What Threatens Our Heads Or Purses? Let Us Think Instead Of What Threatens Our Souls.

The Wind Of Revolutions Is Not Tractable.

The Most Terrible Of Motives And The Most Unanswerable Of Responses: Because.

Nothing Is More Imminent Than The Impossible . . . What We Must Always Foresee Is The Unforeseen.

For Dogs We Kings Should Have Lions, And For Cats, Tigers. The Great Benefits A Crown.

Every Body Drags Its Shadow, And Every Mind Its Doubt.

When God Desires To Destroy A Thing, He Entrusts Its Destruction To The Thing Itself. Every Bad Institution Of This World Ends By Suicide.

Every Step Which The Intelligence Of Europe Has Taken Has Been In Spite Of The Clerical Party.

Separated Lovers Cheat Absence By A Thousand Fancies Which Have Their Own Reality. They Are Prevented From Seeing One Another And They Cannot Write; Nevertheless They Find Countless Mysterious Ways Of Corresponding, By Sending Each Other The Song Of Birds, The Scent Of Flowers, The Laughter Of Children.

Every Bad Institution Of This World Ends By Suicide.

A Republic May Be Called The Climate Of Civilization.

Diamonds Are Found Only In The Dark Places Of The Earth, Truths Are Found Only In The Depths Of Thought.

The Merciful Precepts Of Christ Will At Last Suffuse The Code And It Will Glow With Their Radiance. Crime Will Be Considered An Illness With Its Own Doctors To Replace Your Judges And Its Hospitals To Replace Your Prisons. Liberty Shall Be Equated With Health. Ointments And Oil Shall Be Applied To Limbs That Were Once Shackled And Branded. Infirmities That Once Were Scourged With Anger Shall Now Be Bathed With Love. The Cross In Place Of The Gallows: Sublime And Yet So Simple.

Strange To Say, The Luminous World Is The Invisible World; The Luminous World Is That Which We Do Not See. Our Eyes Of Flesh See Only Night.

Taste Is The Common Sense Of Genius.

Too Much Improvisation Leaves The Mind Stupidly Void.

The Sunshine Was Delightful, The Foliage Gently Astir, More From The Activity Of Birds Than From The Breeze. One Gallant Little Bird, Doubtless Lovelorn, Was Singing His Heart Out At The Top Of A Tall Tree.

The Owl Goes Not Into The Nest Of The Lark.

A Benevolent Malefactor, Merciful, Gentle, Helpful, Clement, A Convict, Returning Good For Evil, Giving Back Pardon For Hatred, Preferring Pity To Vengeance, Preferring To Ruin Himself Rather Than To Ruin His Enemy, Saving Him Who Had Smitten Him, Kneeling On The Heights Of Virtue, More Nearly Akin To An Angel Than To A Man. Javert Was Constrained To Admit To Himself That This Monster Existed. Things Could Not Go On In This Manner.

We Do Not Comprehend Everything, But We Insult Nothing.

To Pay Compliments To The One We Love Is The First Method Of Caressing, A Demi-audacity Venturing. A Compliment Is Something Like A Kiss Through A Veil.

When You Get An Idea Into Your Head You Find It In Everything.

The Hatred Of Luxury Is Not An Intelligent Hatred. It Implies A Hatred Of Arts.

But Secondly You Say 'society Must Exact Vengeance, And Society Must Punish'. Wrong On Both Counts. Vengeance Comes From The Individual And Punishment From God.

M. Mabeuf’s Political Opinion Was A Passionate Fondness For Plants, And A Still Greater One For Books. He Had, Like Everybody Else, His Termination In Ist, Without Which Nobody Could Have Lived In Those Times, But He Was Neither A Royalist, Nor A Bonapartist, Nor A Chartist, Nor An Orleanist, Nor An Anarchist; He Was An Old-bookist.

Political Opinions

What A Gloomy Thing, Not To Know The Address Of One's Soul.

Revolution Is The Larva Of Civilization.

Word Which The Finger Of God Has Written On The Brow Of Every Man — Hope!

Do You Hear The People Sing? Singing A Song Of Angry Men

Indigestion Is Charged By God With Enforcing Morality On The Stomach.

Symmetry Is Ennui, And Ennui Is The Very Essence Of Grief And Melancholy. Despair Yawns.

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.

Youth, Even In Its Sorrows, Always Has A Brilliancy Of Its Own.

Wonderful Nature Has A Double Meaning, Which Dazzles Great Minds And Blinds Uncultivated Souls. When Man Is Ignorant, When The Desert Is Filled With Visions, The Darkness Of Solitude Is Added To The Darkness Of Intelligence; Hence, In Man, The Possibilities Of Perdition

When Grace Combines With Wrinkles, It Is Admirable. There Is An Indescribable Light Of Dawn About Intensely Happy Old Age. . . . The Young Person Is Handsome, But The Old, Superb.

We Shall Look On Crime As A Disease, And Its Physicians Shall Displace The Judges, Its Hospitals Displace The Galleys. Liberty And Health Shall Be Alike. We Shall Pour Balm And Oil Where We Formerly Applied Iron And Fire; Evil Will Be Treated In Charity, Instead Of In Anger. This Change Will Be Simple And Sublime.

In This World, Which Is So Plainly The Antechamber Of Another, There Are No Happy Men. The True Division Of Humanity Is Between Those Who Live In Light And Those Who Live In Darkness. Our Aim Must Be To Diminish The Number Of The Latter And Increase The Number Of The Former. That Is Why We Demand Education And Knowledge.

A Stout Heart May Be Ruined In Fortune But Not In Spirit.

We Need Those Who Pray Constantly To Compensate For Those Who Do Not Pray At All.

A Language Does Not Become Fixed. The Human Intellect Is Always On The March, Or, If You Prefer, In Movement, And Languages With It.

The Convent Is Supreme Egotism Resulting In Supreme Self-denial.

Every Day Has Its Great Grief Or Its Small Anxiety. ... One Cloud Is Dispelled, Another Forms. There Is Hardly One Day In A Hundred Of Real Joy And Bright Sunshine.

Oh Lord! Open The Doors Of Night For Me So That I May Leave This Place And Disappear.

Diamonds Are To Be Found Only In The Darkness Of The Earth, And Truth In The Darkness Of The Mind.

A Fall From Such A Height Is Rarely Straight Downwards.

Nature Is Pitiless; She Never Withdraws Her Flowers, Her Music, Her Fragrance, And Her Sunlight From Before Human Cruelty Or Suffering.

To Lie A Little Is Not Possible: He Who Lies, Lies The Whole Lie.

Where Would The Shout Of Love Begin, If Not From The Summit Of Sacrifice?

The World Of Sleep Has An Existence Of Its Own.

Music Expresses That Which Cannot Be Put Into Words.

Sound And Music

Since We Shall Love Each Other, I Shall Be Great And You Shall Be Rich.

To Gaze Into The Depths Of The Sea Is, In The Imagination, Like Beholding The Vast Unknown, And From Its Most Terrible Point Of View. The Submarine Gulf Is Analogous To The Realm Of Night And Dreams. There Also Is Sleep, Unconsciousness, Or At Least Apparent Unconsciousness, Of Creation. There In The Awful Silence And Darkness, The Rude First Forms Of Life, Phantomlike, Demoniacal, Pursue Their Horrible Instincts.

Sire, You Are Looking At A Plain Man, And I Am Looking At A Great Man. Each Of Us May Benefit.

One Sometimes Says: 'he Killed Himself Because He Was Bored With Life.' One Ought Rather To Say: 'he Killed Himself Because He Was Bored By Lack Of Life.'

He Did Not Study God; He Was Dazzled By Him.

Have No Fear Of Robbers Or Murderers. They Are External Dangers, Petty Dangers. We Should Fear Ourselves. Prejudices Are The Real Robbers; Vices The Real Murderers. The Great Dangers Are Within Us. Why Worry About What Threatens Our Heads Or Our Purses? Let Us Think Instead Of What Threatens Our Souls.

Habit Is The Nursery Of Errors.

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.

A Day Will Come When Markets, Open To Trade, And Minds, Open To Ideas, Will Become The Sole Battlefield.

Those Who Pray Always Are Necessary To Those Who Never Pray. In Our View, The Whole Question Is In The Amount Of Thought That Is Mingled With Prayer.

The Beautiful Has But One Type, The Ugly Has A Thousand.

Loving Is Half Of Believing.

People Generally Will Soon Understand That Writers Should Be Judged, Not According To Rules And Species, Which Are Contrary To Nature And Art, But According To The Immutable Principles Of The Art Of Composition, And The Special Laws Of Their Individual Temperaments.

God Made Only Water, But Man Made Wine.

All Roads Are Blocked To A Philosophy Which Reduces Everything To The Word "no." To "no" There Is Only One Answer And That Is "yes." Nihilism Has No Substance. There Is No Such Thing As Nothingness, And Zero Does Not Exist. Everything Is Something. Nothing Is Nothing. Man Lives More By Affirmation Than By Bread.

The Saints Were His Friends, And Blessed Him; The Monsters Were His Friends, And Guarded Him.

It Is Not So Easy To Keep Silent When The Silence Is A Lie.

The Spirit Of God, Like The Sun, Always Gives All Its Light At Once. The Spirit Of Man Resembles The Pale Moon, Which Has Its Phases, Its Absences And Its Returns, Its Lucidity And Its Spots, Its Fullness And Its Disappearance, Which Borrows All Its Light From The Rays Of The Sun, And Which Still Dares To Intercept Them On Occasion.

Short As Life Is, We Make It Still Shorter By The Careless Waste Of Time.

They Say Love Is Blindness Of Heart; I Say Not To Love Is Blindness.

My Greatness Does Not Extend To This Shelf.

The Learned Man Knows That He Is Ignorant.

To Know How To Distinguish The Agitation Arising From Covetousness, From The Agitation Arising From Principles, To Fight The One And Aid The Other, In This Lies The Genius And The Power Of Great Revolutionary Leaders.

Revolutionary Leaders

The Greatest Happiness Of Life Is The Conviction That We Are Loved; Loved For Ourselves, Or Rather, Loved In Spite Of Ourselves.

The Drama Is Complete Poetry. The Ode And The Epic Contain It Only In Germ; It Contains Both Of Them In A State Of High Development, And Epitomizes Both.

He Had, They Said, Tasted In Succession All The Apples Of The Tree Of Knowledge, And, Whether From Hunger Or Disgust, Had Ended By Tasting The Forbidden Fruit.

It Is Not Enough To Be Happy, One Must Be Content.

The Transept Belfry And The Two Towers Were To Him Three Great Cages, The Birds In Which, Taught By Him, Would Sing For Him Alone. Yet It Was These Same Bells Which Had Made Him Deaf; But Mothers Are Often Fondest Of The Child Who Has Made Them Suffer Most.

The Real, Native South Seas Food Is Lousy. You Can't Eat It.

If He Had Had All Peru In His Pocket, He Would Certainly Have Given It To This Dancer; But Gringoire Had Not Peru In His Pocket; And Besides, America Was Not Yet Discovered. (p. 66)

Love At First Sight

Each Man Should Frame Life So That At Some Future Hour Fact And His Dreaming Meet.

When We Are At The End Of Life, To Die Means To Go Away; When We Are At The Beginning, To Go Away Means To Die.

Sometimes He Used A Spade In His Garden, And Sometimes He Read And Wrote. He Had But One Name For These Two Kinds Of Labor; He Called Them Gardening. ‘the Spirit Is A Garden,’ Said He

It Is Often Necessary To Know How To Obey A Woman In Order Sometimes To Have The Right To Command Her.

Cheerfulness Is Like Money Well Expended In Charity; The More We Dispense Of It, The Greater Our Possession.

Seeing So Much Poverty Everywhere Makes Me Think That God Is Not Rich. He Gives The Appearance Of It, But I Suspect Some Financial Difficulties.

God Has Bestowed Two Gifts On Man: Hope And Ignorance. Ignorance Is The Better Of The Two.

One Of The Magnanimities Of Woman Is To Yield.

Civil War.... What Did The Words Mean? Was There Any Such Thing As "foreign War"? Was Not All Warfare Between Men Warfare Between Brothers?

Every Bird Which Flies Has The Thread Of The Infinite In Its Claw. Germination Includes The Hatching Of A Meteor And The Tap Of A Swallow's Bill Breaking The Egg, And It Leads Forward The Birth Of An Earth-worm And The Advent Of Socrates.

Architecture Has Recorded The Great Ideas Of The Human Race. Not Only Every Religious Symbol, But Every Human Thought Has Its Page In That Vast Book.

Not Ill? No Truly, I Am Young, Healthful, And Strong; The Blood Flows Freely In My Veins; My Limbs Obey My Will; I Am Robust In Mind And Body, Constituted For A Long Life. Yes, All This Is True; And Yet, Nevertheless, I Have An Illness, A Fatal Illness,-an Illness Given By The Hand Of Man!

It Is Most Pleasant To Commit A Just Action Which Is Disagreeable To Someone Whom One Does Not Like.

The Peculiarity Of Sunrise Is To Make Us Laugh At All Our Terrors Of The Night, And Our Laugh Is Always Proportioned To The Fear We Have Had.

The Animal Is Ignorant Of The Fact That He Knows. The Man Is Aware Of The Fact That He Is Ignorant.

The Author Creates A Book And The People Accept Or Not Accept It. The Creator Of A Book Is An Author And The Creator Of It`s Fate Are People.

I Love All Men Who Think, Even Those Who Think Otherwise Than Myself.

And The Dream That Our Mind Had Sketched In Haste Shall Others Continue, But Never Complete. For None Upon Earth Can Achieve His Scheme; The Best As The Worst Are Futile Here: We Wake At The Self-same Point Of The Dream, All Is Here Begun, And Finished Elsewhere.

Youth Is The Future Smiling At A Stranger, Which Is Itself.

A Strange Thing Has Happened, Do You Know? I Am In Darkness. There Is A Person Who, Departing, Took Away The Sun.

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.

Success Is A Very Hideous Thing. Its False Resemblance To Merit Deceives Men.

The Most Beautiful Of Altars, He Said, Is The Soul Of An Unhappy Creature Consoled And Thankfing God.

Genius Is A Promontory Jutting Out Into The Infinite.

Every Blade Has Two Edges; He Who Wounds With One Wounds Himself With The Other.

Jesus Wept; Voltaire Smiled. From That Divine Tear And From That Human Smile Is Derived The Grace Of Present Civilization.

His Judgement Demonstrates That One Can Be A Genius And Understand Nothing Of An Art That Is Not One's Own.

Though One Believes In Nothing, There Are Moments In Life When One Accepts The Religion Of The Temple Nearest At Hand.

Reason Is Intelligence Taking Exercise. Imagination Is Intelligence With An Erection.

As For The Bishop, The Sight Of The Guillotine Was A Great Shock To Him, From Which He Recovered Only Slowly.

We Are Given Up To Those Gods, Those Monsters, Those Giants, — Our Thoughts.

There Is A Way Of Meeting Error While On The Road Of Truth.

A Mother's Arms Are Made Of Tenderness And Children Sleep Soundly In Them.

Mother Daughter

To Think Is Of Itself To Be Useful; It Is Always And In All Cases A Striving Toward God.

The Convent, Which Belongs To The West As It Does To The East, To Antiquity As It Does To The Present Time, To Buddhism And Muhammadanism As It Does To Christianity, Is One Of The Optical Devices Whereby Man Gains A Glimpse Of Infinity.

England Has Two Books, The Bible And Shakespeare. England Made Shakespeare,but The Bible Made England.

For True Poetry, Complete Poetry, Consists In The Harmony Of Contraries. Hence, It Is Time To Say Aloud--and It Is Here Above Allthat Exceptions Prove The Rule--that Everything That Exists In Nature Exists In Art.

With A Tiny Bit Of Effort, The Nettle Would Be Useful; If You Neglect It, It Becomes A Pest. So Then We Kill It. How Many Men Are Like Nettles My Friends, There Is No Such Thing As A Weed And No Such Thing As A Bad Man. There Are Only Bad Cultivators.

He Reached For His Pocket, And Found There, Only Reality

The Soul Has Greater Need Of The Ideal Than Of The Real

Every Idea Must Have A Visible Enfolding.

From A Political Point Of View, There Is But One Principle, The Sovereignty Of Man Over Himself. This Sovereignty Of Myself Over Myself Is Called Liberty

There Exists, At The Bottom Of All Abasement And Misfortune, A Last Extreme Which Rebels And Joins Battle With The Forces Of Law And Respectability In A Desperate Struggle, Waged Partly By Cunning And Partly By Violence, At Once Sick And Ferocious, In Which It Attacks The Prevailing Social Order With The Pin-pricks Of Vice And The Hammer-blows Of Crime.

Fame Must Have Enemies, As Light Must Have Gnats.

The True Artist Can Only Labor Con Amore.

These Greek Capitals, Black With Age, And Quite Deeply Graven In The Stone, With I Know Not What Signs Peculiar To Gothic Calligraphy Imprinted Upon Their Forms And Upon Their Attitudes, As Though With The Purpose Of Revealing That It Had Been A Hand Of The Middle Ages Which Had Inscribed Them There, And Especially The Fatal And Melancholy Meaning Contained In Them, Struck The Author Deeply.

Joie Est Mon Caractere, C'est La Faute A Voltaire; Misere Est Mon Trousseau C'est La Faute A Rousseau. [joy Is My Character, 'tis The Fault Of Voltaire; Misery Is My Trousseau 'tis The Fault Of Rousseau.] - Gavroche

His Whole Life Was Now Summed Up In Two Words: Absolute Uncertainty Within An Impenetrable Fog.

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.

Let Us Have Compassion For Those Under Chastisement. Alas, Who Are We Ourselves? Who Am I And Who Are You? Whence Do We Come And Is It Quite Certain That We Did Nothing Before We Were Born? This Earth Is Not Without Some Resemblance To A Gaol. Who Knows But That Man Is A Victim Of Divine Justice? Look Closely At Life. It Is So Constituted That One Senses Punishment Everywhere.

Love Partakes Of The Soul Itself. It Is Of The Same Nature. Like It, It Is A Divine Spark, Like It, It Is Incorruptible, Indivisible, Imperishable, It Is The Point Of Fire Which Is Within Us, Which Is Immortal And Infinite, Which Nothing Can Limit And Nothing Can Extinguish.

Woe, Alas, To Those Who Have Loved Only Bodies, Forms, Appearances! Death Will Rob Them Of Everything. Try To Love Souls, You Will Find Them Again.

Is There Not In Every Human Soul A Primitive Spark, A Divine Element, Incorruptible In This World And Immortal In The Next, Which Can Be Developed By Goodness, Kindled, Lit Up, And Made To Radiate, And Which Evil Can Never Entirely Extinguish.

The Wise Man Does Not Grow Old, But Ripens.

Dreaming Is Happiness. Waiting Is Life.

Those Who Live Are Those Who Fight.

Have But Luck, And You Will Have The Rest; Be Fortunate, And You Will Be Thought Great.

O Youth! Thou Often Tearest Thy Wings Against The Thorns Of Voluptuousness.

It Seemed To Be A Necessary Ritual That He Should Prepare Himself For Sleep By Meditating Under The Solemnity Of The Night Sky... A Mysterious Transaction Between The Infinity Of The Soul And The Infinity Of The Universe.

There Is A Secret Drawer In Every Woman's Heart.

To Learn To Read Is To Light A Fire.

Music Expresses That Which Cannot Be Said And On Which It Is Impossible To Be Silent.

To Rove About, Musing, That Is To Say Loitering, Is, For A Philosopher, A Good Way Of Spending Time, Especially In That Kind Of Mock Rurality, Ugly But Odd, And Partaking Of Two Natures, Which Surrounds Certain Large Cities, Particularly Paris.

I Dislike Wealth And Prosperity, Especially That Of Other Men.

So Your Desire Is To Do Nothing? Well, You Shall Not Have A Week, A Day, An Hour, Free From Oppression. You Shall Not Be Able To Lift Anything Without Agony. Every Passing Minute Will Make Your Muscles Crack. What Is Feather To Others Will Be A Rock To You. The Simplest Things Will Become Difficult. Life Will Become Monstrous About You. To Come, To Go, To Breathe, Will Be So Many Terrible Tasks For You. Your Lungs Will Feel Like A Hundred-pound Weight.

Mothers Arms Are Made Of Tenderness, And Sweet Sleep Blesses The Child Who Lies Therein.

I Am A Soul. I Know Well That What I Shall Render Up To The Grave Is Not Myself. That Which Is Myself Will Go Elsewhere. Earth, Thou Art Not My Abyss!

Melancholy Is The Happiness Of Being Sad.

Pleasure And Happiness

Science Says The First Word On Everything, And The Last Word On Nothing.

Our Acts Make Or Mar Us, We Are The Children Of Our Own Deeds.

Thought Is The Work Of The Intellect, Reverie Is Its Self-indulgence. To Substitute Day-dreaming For Thought Is To Confuse A Poison With A Source Of Nourishment.

It Is In The Name Of Moses That Bellarmin Thunderstrikes Galileo; And This Great Vulgarizer Of The Great Seeker Copernicus, Galileo, The Old Man Of Truth, The Magian Of The Heavens, Was Reduced To Repeating On His Knees Word For Word After The Inquisitor This Formula Of Shame: "corde Sincera Et Fide Non Ficta Abjuro Maledico Et Detestor Supradictos Errores Et Hereses." Falsehood Put An Ass's Hood On Science.

Virtue Has A Veil, Vice A Mask.

Every Bird Which Flies Has The Thread Of The Infinite In Its Claw.

Forget Not, Never Forget That You Have Promised Me To Use This Silver To Become An Honest Man.... Jean Valjean, My Brother: You Belong No Longer To Evil, But To Good. It Is Your Soul That I Am Buying For You. I Withdraw It From Dark Thoughts And From The Spirit Of Perdition, And I Give It To God!

But Alas, If I Have Not Maintained My Victory, It Is God's Fault For Not Making Man And The Devil Of Equal Strength.

The Ox Suffers, The Cart Complains.

Poetry Contains Philosophy As The Soul Contains Reason.

In 1815, M. Charles Francois-bienvenu Myriel Was Bishop Of D-----. He Was A Man Of Seventy-five, And Had Occupied The Bishopric Of D----- Since 1806. Although It In No Manner Concerns, Even In The Remotest Degree, What We Have To Relate, It May Not Be Useless, Were It Only For The Sake Of Exactness In All Things, To Notice Here The Reports And Gossip Which Had Arisen On His Account From The Time Of His Arrival In The Diocese.

It Is Sad To Tell, But After Having Tried Society, Which Had Caused His Misfortune, He Tried Providence Which Created Society, And Condemned It Also.

This Child Whom We Love, Brings Daylight Into Our Soul.

Man's Greatest Actions Are Performed In Minor Struggles. Life, Misfortune, Isolation, Abandonment And Poverty Are Battlefields Which Have Their Heroes - Obscure Heroes Who Are At Times Greater Than Illustrious Heroes.

A Breath Of Paris Preserves The Soul.

Success Is An Ugly Thing. Men Are Deceived By Its False Resemblances To Merit.... They Confound The Brilliance Of The Firmament With The Star-shaped Footprints Of A Duck In The Mud.

Because A Fact Seems Strange To You, You Conclude That It Is Not One. ... All Science, However, Commences By Being Strange. Science Is Successive. It Goes From One Wonder To Another. It Mounts By A Ladder. The Science Of To-day Would Seem Extravagant To The Science Of A Former Time. Ptolemy Would Believe Newton Mad.

Give To A Being The Useless, And Deprive Him Of The Needful, And You Have The Gamin.

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.

Her Soul Trembled On Her Lips Like A Drop Of Dew On A Flower.

What Matters Deafness Of The Ear, When The Mind Hears? The One True Deafness, The Incurable Deafness, Is That Of The Mind.

Laughter Is The Sun That Drives Winter From The Human Face.

Daring Is The Price Of Progress. All Splendid Conquests Are The Prize Of Boldness, More Or Less.

What A Grand Thing, To Be Loved! What A Grander Thing Still, To Love!

A Man Is Not Idle Because He Is Absorbed In Thought. There Is A Visible Labor And There Is An Invisible Labor.

To Rove About, Musing, That Is To Say Loitering, Is, For A Philosopher, A Good Way Of Spending Time.

Logic Ignores The Almost, Just As The Sun Ignores The Candle.

A Smile Is The Same As Sunshine; It Banishes Winter From The Human Countenance.

To Destroy Abuses Is Not Enough; Habits Must Also Be Changed. The Windmill Has Gone, But The Wind Is Still There." ~old Man G--- To Monseigneur Bienvenu Myriel

The Cruel Of Heart Have Their Own Black Happiness.

Where The Telescope Ends The Microscope Begins, And Which Has The Wider Vision?

To Crush Out Fanaticism And Revere The Infinite, Such Is The Law. Let Us Not Confine Ourselves To Falling Prostrate Beneath The Tree Of Creation And Contemplating Its Vast Ramifications Full Of Stars. We Have A Duty To Perform, To Cultivate The Human Soul, To Defend Mystery Against Miracle, To Adore The Incomprehensible And To Reject The Absurd; To Admit Nothing That Is Inexplicable Excepting What Is Necessary, To Purify Faith And Obliterate Superstition From The Face Of Religion, To Remove The Vermin From The Garden Of God.

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!

If A Writer Wrote Merely For His Time, I Would Have To Break My Pen And Throw It Away.

To Contemplate Is To Look At Shadows.

Beauty Is As Useful As The Useful. More So, Perhaps. (le Beau Est Aussi Utile Que L'utile. Plus Peut-etre.)

Animals Are Nothing But The Portrayal Of Our Virtues And Vices Made Manifest To Our Eyes, The Visible Reflections Of Our Souls.

We Are On The Side Of Religion As Opposed To Religions, And We Are Among Those Who Believe In The Wretched Inadequacy Of Sermons And The Sublimity Of Prayer.

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.

A Writer Is A World Trapped In A Person.

Nothing Makes A Man So Adventurous As An Empty Pocket.

Press On! A Better Fate Awaits Thee.

Science Is Continually Correcting What It Has Said. Fertile Corrections... Science Is A Ladder... Poetry Is A Winged Flight... An Artistic Masterpiece Exists For All Time... Dante Does Not Efface Homer.

Promise To Give Me A Kiss On My Brow When I Am Dead. --i Shall Feel It." She Dropped Her Head Again On Marius' Knees, And Her Eyelids Closed. He Thought The Poor Soul Had Departed. Eponine Remained Motionless. All At Once, At The Very Moment When Marius Fancied Her Asleep Forever, She Slowly Opened Her Eyes In Which Appeared The Sombre Profundity Of Death, And Said To Him In A Tone Whose Sweetness Seemed Already To Proceed From Another World:-- "and By The Way, Monsieur Marius, I Believe That I Was A Little Bit In Love With You.

There Is Nothing Like A Dream To Create The Future.

Trending Author

Zoe Lister-Jones

Rosalynn Carter

George M. Cohan

Category