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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.

-Victor Hugo

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It Is In The

Victor Hugo

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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.

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Curiosity Is One Of The Forms Of Feminine Bravery.

Music Is The Vapor Of Art. It Is To Poetry What Reverie Is To Thought, What Fluid Is To Solid, What The Ocean Of Clouds Is To The Ocean Of Waves.

I Tried. But I Feel That I Haven't Given Utterance To The Thousandth Part Of What Lies Within Me. When I Go To The Grave I Can Say As Others Have Said, "i Have Finished My Day's Work." But I Cannot Say, "i Have Finished My Life." My Day's Work Will Begin Again The Next Morning. The Tomb Is Not A Blind Alley; It Is A Thoroughfare. It Closes On The Twilight, But Opens On The Dawn.

It Is The End. But Of What? The End Of France? No. The End Of Kings? Yes.

She Was Sad With An Obscure Sadness Of Which She Had Not The Secret Herself. There Was In Her Whole Person The Stupor Of A Life Ended But Never Commenced.

One Resists The Invasion Of Armies; One Does Not Resist The Invasion Of Ideas.

Progress Is The Stride Of God.

He Is The Best Gentleman That Is The Son Of His Own Deserts, And Not The Degenerated Heir Of Another's Virtue.

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.

I Will Be Chateaubriand Or Nothing.

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

At The Moment When Her Eyes Closed, When All Feeling Vanished In Her, She Thought That She Felt A Touch Of Fire Imprinted On Her Lips, A Kiss More Burning Than The Red-hot Iron Of The Executioner.

The Soul Does Not Give Itself Up To Despair Until It Has Exhausted All Illusions.

He Had Not Yet Lived Long Enough To Have Discovered That Nothing Is More Close At Hand Then The Impossible, And That What Must Be Looked For Is Always The Unforeseen.

When Love Has Fused And Mingled Two Beings In A Sacred And Angelic Unity, The Secret Of Life Has Been Discovered So Far As They Are Concerned; They Are No Longer Anything More Than The Two Boundaries Of The Same Destiny; They Are No Longer Anything But The Two Wings Of The Same Spirit. Love, Soar.

I Am In The Night. There Is A Being Who Has Gone Away And Carried The Heavens With Her. Oh! To Be Laid Side By Side In The Same Tomb, Hand Clasped In Hand, And From Time To Time, In The Darkness, To Caress A Finger Gently, That Would Suffice For My Eternity.

The Three Great Problems Of This Century; The Degradation Of Man In The Proletariat, The Subjection Of Women Through Hunger, The Atrophy Of The Child By Darkness.

Melancholy Is The Happiness Of Being Sad.

Pleasure And Happiness

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.

To Know, To Think, To Dream. That Is Everything.

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.

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 Are All Under Sentence Of Death, But With A Sort Of Indefinite Reprieve.

Doing Nothing Is Happiness For Children And Misery For Old Men.

Do Not Ask The Name Of The Person Who Seeks A Bed For The Night. He Who Is Reluctant To Give His Name Is The One Who Most Needs Shelter.

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

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

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.

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.

There Is A Determined Though Unseen Bravery That Defends Itself Foot By Foot In The Darkness Against The Fatal Invasions Of Necessity And Dishonesty. Noble And Mysterious Triumphs That No Eye Sees, And No Fame Rewards, And No Flourish Of Triumph Salutes. Life, Misfortunes, Isolation, Abandonment, Poverty, Are Battlefields That Have Their Heroes; Obscure Heroes, Sometimes Greater Than The Illustrious Heroes.

Our Life Dreams The Utopia. Our Death Achieves The Ideal.

Let Us Sacrifice One Day To Gain Perhaps A Whole Life.

Being Good Is Easy, What Is Difficult Is Being Just.

Wisdom Is The Health Of The Soul.

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.

When A Woman Is Talking To You, Listen To What She Says With Her Eyes.

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.

Can Human Nature Ever Be Wholly And Radically Transformed? Can The Man Whom God Made Good Be Made Wicked By Man? Can The Soul Be Reshaped In Its Entirety By Destiny And Made Evil Because Destiny Is Evil? Can The Heart Become Misshapen And Afflicted With Ugly, Incurable Deformities Under Disproportionate Misfortune, Like A Spinal Column Bent Beneath A Too Low Roof?

Work, Which Makes A Man Free, And Thought, Which Makes Him Worthy Of Freedom.

Spira, Spera. (breathe, Hope)

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

I Only Take A Half Share In The Civil War; I Am Willing To Die, I Am Not Willing To Kill.

The Ox Suffers, The Cart Complains.

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

The Future Has Several Names. For The Weak, It Is Impossible; For The Fainthearted, It Is Unknown; But For The Valiant, It Is Ideal.

A Little Girl Without A Doll Is Almost As Unhappy, And Quite As Impossible, As A Woman Without Children." From Chapter Viii Of Les Miserables

Go To Sleep In Peace. God Is Awake.

To Breathe Paris Is To Preserve One's Soul.

But When Ill Indeed, Even Dismissing The Doctor Don't Always Succeed.

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

One Can Resist The Invasion Of An Army But One Cannot Resist The Invasion Of Ideas.

Winter Is On My Head, But Eternal Spring Is In My Heart. The Nearer I Approach The End, The Plainer I Hear Around Me The Immortal Symphonies Of The Worlds Which Invite Me. . . . For Half A Century I Have Been Writing Thoughts In Prose, Verse, History, Drama, Romance, Tradition, Satire, Ode, And Song. I Have Tried Them All, But I Feel I Have Not Said A Thousandth Part Of That Which Is Within Me. When I Go Down To The Grave, I Can Say "i Have Finished My Day's Work," But I Cannot Say "i Have Finished My Life's Work."

Everybody Has Noticed The Way Cats Stop And Loiter In A Half-open Door. Hasn't Everyone Said To A Cat: For Heavens Sake Why Don't You Come In? With Opportunity Half-open In Front Of Them, There Are Men Who Have A Similar Tendency To Remain Undecided Between Two Solutions, At The Risk Of Being Crushed By Fate Abruptly Closing The Opportunity. The Overprudent, Cats As They Are, And Because They Are Cats, Sometimes Run More Danger Than The Bold

Here We Stop. Upon The Threshold Of Wedding Nights Stands An Angel Smiling, His Finger On His Lip.

The Smaller It Is The Heart, More Hatred Houses.

The Sadness Which Reigned Everywhere Was But An Excuse For Unfailing Kindness.

It Is The Peculiarity Of Grief To Bring Out The Childish Side Of Man.

The Tomb Is Not A Blind Alley: It Is A Thoroughfare. It Closes On The Twilight. It Opens On The Dawn.

Every Good Quality Runs Into A Defect; Economy Borders On Avarice, The Generous Are Not Far From The Prodigal, The Brave Man Is Close To The Bully; He Who Is Very Pious Is Slightly Sanctimonious; There Are Just As Many Vices To Virtue As There Are Holes In The Mantle Of Diogenes.

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

Mother Daughter

A Fixed Idea Ends In Madness Or Heroism.

People Weighed Down With Troubles Do Not Look Back; They Know Only Too Well That Misfortune Stalks Them.

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.

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

It Is The Essence Of Truth That It Is Never Excessive.... We Must Not Resort To The Flame Where Only Light Is Required.

Exaggeration Is

Revery, Which Is Thought In Its Nebulous State, Borders Closely Upon The Land Of Sleep, By Which It Is Bounded As By A Natural Frontier.

Genuflection Before The Idol Or The Dollar Destroys The Muscles Which Walk And The Will That Moves.

A Library Implies An Act Of Faith.

A Phenomenon Often Seen. A Sceptic Adhering To A Believer; That Is As Simple As The Law Of The Complementary Colours. What We Lack Attracts Us. Nobody Loves The Light Like The Blind Man.

No Doubt It Was Necessary To Civilize Man In Relation To Man. That Work Is Already Advanced And Is Making Progress Every Day. But Man Must Be Civilized Also In Relation To Nature.

Upon The First Goblet He Read This Inscription, Monkey Wine; Upon The Second, Lion Wine; Upon The Third, Sheep Wine; Upon The Fourth, Swine Wine. These Four Inscriptions Expressed The Four Descending Degrees Of Drunkenness: The First, That Which Enlivens; The Second, That Which Irritates; The Third, That Which Stupefies; Finally The Last, That Which Brutalizes.

Revolution Is The Larva Of Civilization.

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

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

The First Proof Of Charity In A Priest, And Especially A Bishop, Is Poverty.

He Who Is Not Master Of His Own Thoughts Is Not Accountable For His Own Deeds.

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

Die, Very Good, But Do Not Make Others Die. Suicides Like The One Which Is About To Take Place Here Are Sublime, But Suicide Is Restricted, And Does Not Allow Of Extension; And So Soon As It Affects Your Neighbors, Suicide Becomes Murder.

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.

The Ode Lives Upon The Ideal, The Epic Upon The Grandiose, The Drama Upon The Real.

As For The Author, He Is Profoundly Unaware Of What The Classical Or Romantic Genre Might Consist Of.... In Literature, As In Allthings, There Is Only The Good And The Bad, The Beautiful And The Ugly, The True And The False.

To Live A Life Which Is A Perpetual Falsehood Is To Suffer Unknown Tortures.

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

When Grace Is Joined With Wrinkles, It Is Adorable. There Is An Unspeakable Dawn In Happy Old Age.

Positive Thinking

The Production Of Souls Is The Secret Of Unfathomable Depth.

By Making Himself A Priest Made Himself A Demon.

A Wretched Woman Is More Unfortunate Than A Wretched Man.

Stupidity Talks, Vanity Acts.

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.

Great Perils Have This Beauty, That They Bring To Light The Fraternity Of Strangers.

In My Old Age There Is A Coming Into Flower. My Body Wanes; My Mind Waxes.

Let Us Leave To The Brain What Belongs To It, And Agree That The Work Of The Men Of Genius Is Of The Superhuman, The Offspring Of Man.

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.

Perseverance, Secret Of All Triumphs.

Nihilism Has No Substance. There Is No Such Thing As Nothingness, And Zero Does Not Exist. Everything Is Something. Nothing Is Nothing.

Hypocrisy Is Nothing, In Fact, But A Horrible Hopefulness.

Loving Is Almost A Substitute For Thinking. Love Is A Burning Forgetfulness Of All Other Things. How Shall We Ask Passion To Be Logical?

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

Symmetry Is Tedious, And Tedium Is The Very Basis Of Mourning. Despair Yawns.

God Created The Flirt As Soon As He Made The Fool.

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.

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?

Melancholy Is The Pleasure Of Being Sad.

He Who Contemplates The Depths Of Paris Is Seized With Vertigo. Nothing Is More Fantastic. Nothing Is More Tragic. Nothing Is More Sublime.

Thought Is The Labor Of The Intellect, Reverie Is Its Pleasure.

Civil War? What Does That Mean? Is There Any Foreign War? Isn't Every War Fought Between Men, Between Brothers?

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

Sublime Upon Sublime Scarcely Presents A Contrast, And We Need A Little Rest From Everything, Even The Beautiful.

Dear God! How Beauty Varies In Nature And Art.

If People Did Not Love One Another, I Really Don't See What Use There Would Be In Having Any Spring.

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.

Concision In Style, Precision In Thought, Decision In Life.

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.

When People Look Back At Their Childhood Or Youth, Their Wistfulness Comes From The Memory, Not Of What Their Lives Had Been In Those Years, But Of What Life Had Then Promised To Be. The Expectation Of Some Indefinable Splendor, Of The Unusual, The Exciting, The Great Is An Attribute Of Youth And The Process Of Aging Is The Process Of That Expectations' Gradual Extinction. One Does Not Have To Let It Happen. But That Fire Dies For Lack Of Fuel, Under The Gray Weight Of Disappointments.

To Meditate Is To Labour; To Think Is To Act.

Rhyme, That Enslaved Queen, That Supreme Charm Of Our Poetry, That Creator Of Our Meter.

Marius Was Of The Temperament That Sinks Into Grief And Remains There; Cosette Was Of The Sort That Plunges In And Comes Out Again.

In Love, Such A Word, Whispered, Is A Mysterious Kiss Of The Soul To The Soul.

The Most Excellent Symbol Of The People Is The Paving Stone. One Walks On It Until It Falls On One's Head.

Let Us Fear Ourselves. Prejudices Are The Real Robbers; Vices Are The Real Murderers. The Great Dangers Lie Within Ourselves.

Genius Is Rare Because The Means Of Becoming One Have Not Been Available

One Cannot Be A Good Historian Of The Outward, Visible World Without Giving Some Thought To The Hidden, Private Life Of Ordinary People; And On The Other Hand One Cannot Be A Good Historian Of This Inner Life Without Taking Into Account Outward Events Where These Are Relevant.

Hell Is An Outrage On Humanity. When You Tell Me That Your Deity Made You In His Image, I Reply That He Must Have Been Very Ugly.

Brothers, He Who Dies Here Dies In The Radiance Of The Future, And We Are Entering A Tomb All Flooded With The Dawn.

Equality Does Not Mean That All Plants Must Grow To The Same Height - A Society Of Tall Grass And Dwarf Trees, A Jostle Of Conflicting Jealousies. It Means, In Civic Terms, An Equal Outlet For All Talents; In Political Terms, That All Votes Will Carry The Same Weight; And In Religious Terms That All Beliefs Will Enjoy Equal Rights.

The Persistence Of An All-absorbing Idea Is Terrible.

Despotism Is A Long Crime.

The Thirst For The Infinite Proves Infinity.

Is It Not When The Fall Is The Lowest That Charity Ought To Be The Greatest?

Whether We Be Italians Or Frenchmen, Misery Concerns Us All. Ever Since History Has Been Written, Ever Since Philosophy Has Meditated, Misery Has Been The Garment Of The Human Race; The Moment Has At Length Arrived For Tearing Off That Rag, And For Replacing, Upon The Naked Limbs Of The Man-people, The Sinister Fragment Of The Past With The Grand Purple Robe Of The Dawn.

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

Ah," Cried Gavroche, "what Does This Mean? It Rains Again! ...if This Continues, I Withdraw My Subscription.

Whom Man Kills, Him God Restoreth To Life.

My Greatness Does Not Extend To This Shelf.

Human Intelligence Discovered A Way Of Perpetuating Itself, One Not Only More Durable And More Resistant Than Architecture, But Also Simpler And Easier. Architecture Was Dethroned. The Stone Letters Of Orpheus Gave Way To The Lead Letters Of Gutenburg. The Book Will Kill The Edifice.

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

If You Would Civilize A Man, Begin With His Grandmother.

At Least You Are Mine! Soon – In A Few Months, Perhaps, My Angel Will Sleep In My Arms, Will Awaken In My Arms, Will Live There. All Your Thought At All Moments, All Your Looks Will Be For Me; All My Thought, All My Moments, All My Looks Will Be For You!

Profound Hearts, Wise Minds, Take Life As God Makes It; It Is A Long Trial, And Unintelligible Preparation For The Unknown Destiny.

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

It Is Only Barbarous Nations Who Have A Sudden Growth After A Victory

Nigeria Independence

Curiosity Is Gluttony. To See Is To Devour.

Diamonds Are Found Only In The Dark Bowels Of The Earth; Truths Are Found Only In The Depths Of Thought. It Seemed To Him That After Descending Into Those Depths After Long Groping In The Blackest Of This Darkness, He Had At Last Found One Of These Diamonds, One Of These Truths, And That He Held It In His Hand; And It Blinded Him To Look At It. (pg. 231)

What Was More Needed By This Old Man Who Divided The Leisure Hours Of His Life, Where He Had So Little Leisure, Between Gardening In The Daytime, And Contemplation At Night? Was Not This Narrow Enclosure, With The Sky For A Background, Enough To Enable Him To Adore God In His Most Beautiful As Well As In His Most Sublime Works? Indeed, Is Not That All, And What More Can Be Desired? A Little Garden To Walk, And Immensity To Reflect Upon. At His Feet Something To Cultivate And Gather; Above His Head Something To Study And Meditate Upon: A Few Flowers On The Earth, And All The Stars In The Sky.

We Shall Not Attempt To Give The Reader An Idea Of That Tetrahedron Nose-that Horse-shoe Mouth-that Small Left Eye Over-shadowed By A Red Bushy Brow, While The Right Eye Disappeared Entirely Under An Enormous Wart-of Those Straggling Teeth With Breaches Here And There Like The Battlements Of A Fortress-of That Horny Lip, Over Which One Of Those Teeth Projected Like The Tusk Of An Elephant-of That Forked Chin-and, Above All, Of The Expression Diffused Over The Whole-that Mixture Of Malice, Astonishment, And Melancholy. Let The Reader, If He Can, Figure To Himself This Combination.

To Love Or Have Loved Is All-sufficing. We Must Not Ask For More. No Other Pearl Is To Be Found In The Shadowfolds Of Life. To Love Is An Accomplishment.

Our Mind Is Enriched By What We Receive, Our Heart By What We Give.

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.

Do Not Forget, Do Not Ever Forget, That You Have Promised Me To Use The Money To Make Yourself An Honest Man.' Valjean, Who Did Not Recall Having Made Any Promise, Was Silent. The Bishop Had Spoken The Words Slowly And Deliberately. He Concluded With A Solemn Emphasis: Jean Valjean, My Brother, You No Longer Belong To What Is Evil But To What Is Good. I Have Bought Your Soul To Save It From Black Thoughts And The Spirit Of Perdition, And I Give It To God.

Hope Is A Delusion; No Hand Can Grasp A Wave Or A Shadow.

To Die For Lack Of Love Is Horrible. The Asphyxia Of The Soul.

We Are Not Loved By Our Friends For What We Are; Rather, We Are Loved In Spite Of What We Are.

Are You Afraid Of The Good You Might Do?

Philosophy Is The Microscope Of Thought. Everything Desires To Flee From It, But Nothing Escapes It.

The Realities Of Life Do Not Allow Themselves To Be Forgotten.

Reality Of Life

The Day That A Woman Who Is Passing Before You Sheds A Light Upon You As She Goes, You Are Lost, You Love. You Have Then But One Thing To Do: To Think Of Her So Earnestly That She Will Be Compelled To Think Of You.

Winter Is On My Head, But Eternal Spring Is In My Heart.

There Is A Material Advancement; We Desire It. There Is, Also, A Moral Grandeur; We Hold Fast To It.

You Say, "where Goest Thou?" I Cannot Tell, And Still Go On. But If The Way Be Straight I Cannot Go Amiss: Before Me Lies Dawn And The Day: The Night Behind Me: That Suffices Me: I Break The Bounds: I See, And Nothing More; Believe And Nothing Less. My Future Is Not One Of My Concerns.

In The Relations Of Man With The Animals, With The Flowers, With All The Objects Of Creation, There Is A Whole Great Ethic, Scarcely Perceived As Yet, Which Will At Length Break Through Into The Light, And Which Will Be The Corollary And The Complement To Human Ethics.

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.

A Stand Can Be Made Against Invasion By An Army; No Stand Can Be Made Against Invasion By An Idea.

Let The One Fight For His Flag, And The Other For His Ideal, And Let Them Both Imagine That They Are Fighting For The Country; The Strife Will Be Colossal.

Nothing Makes A Man So Adventurous As An Empty Pocket.

Dying Is Nothing. What's Terrible Is Not To Live.

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.

We May Remark In Passing That To Be Blind And Beloved May, In This World Where Nothing Is Perfect, Be Among The Most Strangely Exquisite Forms Of Happiness. The Supreme Happiness In Life Is The Assurance Of Being Loved; Of Being Loved For Oneself, Even In Spite Of Oneself; And This Assurance The Blind Man Possesses. In His Affliction, To Be Served Is To Be Caressed. Does He Lack Anything? No. Possessing Love He Is Not Deprived Of Light. A Love, Moreover, That Is Wholly Pure. There Can Be No Blindness Where There Is This Certainty.

Most Commonly Revolt Is Born Of Material Circumstances; But Insurrection Is Always A Moral Phenomenon. Revolt Is Masaniello, Who Led The Neapolitan Insurgents In 1647; But Insurrection Is Spartacus. Insurrection Is A Thing Of The Spirit, Revolt Is A Thing Of The Stomach.

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.

We Say And Exclaim Within Ourselves Without Breaking Silence, In A Tumult Where Everything Speaks Except Our Mouths. The Realities Of The Soul Are None The Less Real For Being Invisible And Impalpable.

The Word Gothic, In The Sense In Which It Is Generally Employed, Is Wholly Unsuitable, But Wholly Consecrated. Hence We Accept It And We Adopt It, Like All The Rest Of The World, To Characterize The Architecture Of The Second Half Of The Middle Ages, Where The Ogive Is The Principle Which Succeeds The Architecture Of The First Period, Of Which The Semi-circle Is The Father.

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

Vengeance Comes From The Individual And Punishment From God.

Forty Is The Old Age Of Youth; Fifty The Youth Of Old Age.

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

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

Emotion Is Always New.

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.

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

One Cannot Resist An Idea Whose Time Has Come.

Son, Brother, Father, Lover, Friend. There Is Room In The Heart For All The Affections, As There Is Room In Heaven For All The Stars.

Another Story Must Begin!

I Believe That Pity Is A Law Like Justice, And That Kindness Is A Duty Like Uprightness. That Which Is Weak Has A Right To The Kindness And Pity Of That Which Is Strong. In The Relations Of Man With The Animals...there Is A Great Ethic, Scarcely Perceived As Yet, Which Will At Length Break Through Into The Light, And Which Will Be The Corollary And The Complement To Humans Ethics. Are There Not Here Unsounded Depths For The Thinker? Is One To Think Oneself Mad Because One Has The Sentiment Of Universal Pity In One's Heart?

Dirt Has Been Shrewdly Termed "misplaced Material.

Fame Must Have Enemies, As Light Must Have Gnats.

This First Glance Of A Soul Which Does Not Yet Know Itself Is Like Dawn In The Heavens; It Is The Awakening Of Something Radiant And Unknown.

One Sees Qualities At A Distance And Defects At Close Range.

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

There Are Fathers Who Do Not Love Their Children; There Is No Grandfather Who Does Not Adore His Grandson.

What Is Said About Men Often Has As Much Influence Upon Their Lives, And Especially Upon Their Destinies, As What They Do.

France Lost A Great Novel Last Night.

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.

What Is History? An Echo Of The Past In The Future; A Reflex From The Future On The Past.

While Contemplating The Bride, And Eyeing The Cake Of Soap, He Muttered Between His Teeth: 'tuesday. It Was Not Tuesday. Was It Tuesday? Perhaps It Was Tuesday. Yes, It Was Tuesday.' No One Has Ever Discovered To What This Monologue Referred. Yes, Perchance, This Monologue Had Some Connection With The Last Occasion On Which He Had Dined, Three Days Before, For It Was Now Friday.

There Are Souls Which, Crab-like, Crawl Continually Toward Darkness, Going Back In Life Rather Than Advancing In It, Using What Experience They Have To Increase Their Deformity, Growing Worse Without Ceasing, And Becoming Steeped More And More Thoroughly In An Intensifying Wickedness.

Now, One Cannot Read Nonsense With Impunity.

Puns Are The Droppings Of Soaring Wits.

No Matter Who You Are, The Thought Of So Much Suffering And Degradation Must Cause You To Shudder At The Sight Of A Veil Or Cassock, Those Two Shrouds Of Human Invention.

Popularity? It's Glory's Small Change.

Man Lives More By Affirmation Than By Bread.

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