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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.

-Victor Hugo

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It Seemed To Be

Victor Hugo

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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.

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Desiring Always To Be In Mourning, He Clothed Himself With Night.

Wisdom And Eloquence Are Not Always United.

Algebra Applies To The Clouds.

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.

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

Labor Is Life; Thought Is Light.

Thoughts On Life

The Mother...swinging The Children By Pulling On A Length Of String, While At The Same Time She Kept And Eye On Them With That Protective Watchfulness, Half Animal, Half Angelic, Which Is The Quality Of Motherhood.

How Did It Happen That Their Lips Came Together? How Does It Happen That Birds Sing, That Snow Melts, That The Rose Unfolds, That The Dawn Whitens Behind The Stark Shapes Of Trees On The Quivering Summit Of The Hill? A Kiss, And All Was Said.

Knowledge Is A Weight Added To Conscience.

There Are No Weeds, And No Worthless Men. There Are Only Bad Farmers.

Even The Darkest Night Will End And The Sun Will Rise.

The Truth Of An Upright Man Must Be Accepted On His Own Terms. Moreover, Since Natures Vary, We Must Agree That All The Beauties Of Human Excellence May Be Fostered By Faiths That We Do Not Share.

There Is One Spectacle Grander Than The Sea, That Is The Sky; There Is One Spectacle Grander Than The Sky, That Is The Interior Of The Soul.

You Ask Me What Forces Me To Speak? A Strange Thing; My Conscience.

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

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!

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

Between The Government Which Does Evil And The People Who Accept It - There Is A Certain Shameful Solidarity.

Dirt Has Been Shrewdly Termed "misplaced Material.

No One Can Keep A Secret Better Than A Child.

For, To Make Deserts, God, Who Rules Mankind, Begins With Kings, And Ends The Work By Wind.

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

The First Symptom Of True Love In A Man Is Timidity, In A Young Woman, Boldness. This Is Surprising, And Yet Nothing Is More Simple. It Is The Two Sexes Tending To Approach Each Other And Assuming Each The Other's Qualities.

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

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

Nigeria Independence

There Is Always More Misery Among The Lower Classes Than There Is Humanity In The Higher.

I Met In The Street A Very Poor Young Man Who Was In Love. His Hat Was Old, His Coat Worn, His Cloak Was Out At The Elbows, The Water Passed Through His Shoes, - And The Stars Through His Soul.

Strong And Bitter Words Indicate A Weak Cause.

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.

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

...it All Seemed To Him To Have Disappeared As If Behind A Curtain At A Theater. There Are Such Curtains That Drop In Life. God Is Moving On To The Next Act.

A Joyous Little Creature, So Beautiful, It Was As If A Gate Of Heaven Opened As She Came In.

The Book Which The Reader Now Holds In His Hands, From One End To The Other, As A Whole And In Its Details, Whatever Gaps, Exceptions, Or Weaknesses It May Contain, Treats Of The Advance From Evil To Good, From Injustice To Justice, From Falsity To Truth, From Darkness To Daylight, From Blind Appetite To Conscience, From Decay To Life, From Bestiality To Duty, From Hell To Heaven, From Limbo To God. Matter Itself Is The Starting-point, And The Point Of Arrival Is The Soul. Hydra At The Beginning, An Angel At The End.

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.

True Thinkers Are Characterized By A Blending Of Clearness And Mystery.

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

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!

Almost All Our Desires, When Examined, Contain Something Too Shameful To Reveal.

The Last Resort Of Kings, The Cannonball. The Last Resort Of The People, The Paving Stone.

He Was At His Own Request And Through His Own Complicity Driven Out Of All His Happinesses One After The Other; And He Had This Sorrow, That After Having Lost Cosette Wholly In One Day, He Was Afterwards Obliged To Lose Her Again In Detail.

Wisdom Is The Health Of The Soul.

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.

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.

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.

There Is Suffering In The Light; In Excess It Burns. Flame Is Hostile To The Wing. To Burn And Yet To Fly, This Is The Miracle Of Genius.

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.

Death Belongs To God Alone; By What Right Do Men Touch That Unknown Thing?

Kings Are For Nations In Their Swaddling-clothes: France Has Attained Her Majority.

There Is No Supernatural, There Is Only Nature. Nature Alone Exists And Contains All. All Is. There Is The Part Of Nature That We Perceive, And The Part Of Nature That We Do Not Perceive. ... If You Abandon These Facts, Beware; Charlatans Will Light Upon Them, Also The Imbecile. There Is No Mean: Science, Or Ignorance. If Science Does Not Want These Facts, Ignorance Will Take Them Up. You Have Refused To Enlarge Human Intelligence, You Augment Human Stupidity. When Laplace Withdraws Cagliostro Appears.

When Liberty Returns, I Will Return.

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.

Everything Speaks: The Flowing Airstream And The Sailing Halycon, The Blade Of Grass, The Flower, The Bud, The Element; Did You Imagine The Universe To Be Otherwise?

One Only Needs To See A Smile In A White Crape Bonnet In Order To Enter The Palace Of Dreams.

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

He Who Is Not Capable Of Enduring Poverty Is Not Capable Of Being Free.

God Put In Man Thought; Society, Action; Nature, Revery.

No Man Is More Unhappy Than The One Who Is Never In Adversity; The Greatest Affliction Of Life Is Never To Be Afflicted.

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

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.

Popularity? It's Glory's Small Change.

Go Out In The World And Work Like Money Doesn't Matter, Sing As If No One Is Listening, Love As If You Have Never Been Hurt, And Dance As If No One Is Watching.

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

The True Artist Can Only Labor Con Amore.

All The Human And Animal Manure Which The World Wastes, If Returned To The Land, Instead Of Being Thrown Into The Sea, Would Suffice To Nourish The World.

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.

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

There Is Nothing Like A Dream To Create The Future.

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.

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

To Love Or Have Loved, That Is Enough. Ask Nothing Further. There Is No Other Pearl To Be Found In The Dark Folds Of Life.

In Shakespeare The Birds Sing, The Bushes Are Clothed With Green, Hearts Love, Souls Suffer, The Cloud Wanders, It Is Hot, It Is Cold, Night Falls, Time Passes, Forests And Multitudes Speak, The Vast Eternal Dream Hovers Over All. Sap And Blood, All Forms Of The Multiple Reality, Actions And Ideas, Man And Humanity, The Living And The Life, Solitudes, Cities, Religions, Diamonds And Pearls, Dung-hills And Charnelhouses, The Ebb And Flow Of Beings, The Steps Of Comers And Goers, All, All Are On Shakespeare And In Shakespeare.

I Believe, Sir, In All The Progress. Air Navigation Is The Result Of The Oceanic Navigation: From Water The Human Has To Pass In The Air. Everywhere Where Creation Will Be Breathable To Him, The Human Will Penetrate Into The Creation. Our Only Limit Is Life.

Whom Man Kills, Him God Restoreth To Life.

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

The Supreme Ordeal, Let Us Say Rather, The Only Ordeal, Is The Loss Of The Beloved Being.

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.

Love Would Never Be A Promise Of A Rose Garden Unless It Is Showered With Light Of Faith, Water Of Sincerity And Air Of Passion. Sometimes We Make Love With Our Eyes. Sometimes We Make Love With Our Hands. Sometimes We Make Love With Our Bodies. Always We Make Love With Our Hearts. If I Could Reach Up And Hold A Star For Every Time You've Made Me Smile, The Entire Evening Sky Would Be In The Palm Of My Hand. To Love Another Person Is To See The Face Of God.

If Suffer We Must, Let's Suffer On The Heights.

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

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.

Yes, Instruction! Light! Light! Everything Comes From Light, And To Everything It Returns.

He Loved Books; Books Are Cold But Safe Friends.

O Darkness, The Sky Is A Gloomy Precinct Whose Door You Close, And Whose Key The Soul Owns; And Night Divides Itself In Half, Being Diabolical And Holy, Between Ilis, The Black Angel, And Christ, The Starry Human Being.

To Be Perfectly Happy It Does Not Suffice To Possess Happiness, It Is Necessary To Have Deserved It.

Memory Is A Gulf That A Word Can Move To Its Lowest Depths.

You Can Give Without Loving, But You Can Never Love Without Giving. The Great Acts Of Love Are Done By Those Who Are Habitually Performing Small Acts Of Kindness. We Pardon To The Extent That We Love. Love Is Knowing That Even When You Are Alone, You Will Never Be Lonely Again. & Great Happiness Of Life Is The Conviction That We Are Loved. Loved For Ourselves. & Even Loved In Spite Of Ourselves.

Out Milky Way Is The Dwelling; The Nebulae Are The City.

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

To Die Is Nothing; But It Is Terrible Not To Live.

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.

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.

Creation Lives, Grows, And Multiplies; Man Is But A Witness.

Nature Has Made A Pebble And A Female. The Lapidary Makes The Diamond, And The Lover Makes The Woman.

An Intelligent Hell Would Be Better Than A Stupid Paradise.

Social Prosperity Means Man Happy, The Citizen Free, The Nation Great.

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

The Hand Which Moves Over The Dial Moves Also Among Souls.

The Brutalities Of Progress Are Called Revolutions. When They Are Over We Realize This: That The Human Race Has Been Roughly Handled, But That It Has Advanced.

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.

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

She Loved With So Much Passion As She Loved With Ignorance. She Did Not Know Whether It Were Good Or Evil, Beneficent Or Dangerous, Necessary Or Accidental, Eternal Or Transitory, Permitted Or Prohibited: She Loved.

Idleness Is The Heaviest Of All Oppressions.

I Had A Dream My Life Would Be Different From This Hell I Am Living, So Different From What It Seemed. Now Life Has Killed The Dream I Dreamed.

Idleness, Pleasure, What Abysses! To Do Nothing Is A Dreary Course To Take, Be Sure Of It. To Live Idle Upon The Substance Of Society! To Be Useless, That Is To Say, Noxious! This Leads Straight To The Lowest Depth Of Misery.

One Drop Of Wine Is Enough To Redden A Whole Glass Of Water.

If You Look In The Eyes Of The Young, You See Flame. If You Look In The Eyes Of The Old, You See Light.

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 Supreme Happiness Of Life Is The Conviction That We Are Loved.

When Two Souls Have Finally Found Each Other, There Is Established Between Them A Union Which Begins On Earth And Continues Forever In Heaven.

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.

It Is Those Books Which A Man Possesses But Does Not Read Which Constitute The Most Suspicious Evidence Against Him.

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

It Is By Suffering That Human Beings Become Angels.

The Straight Line, A Respectable Optical Illusion Which Ruins Many A Man.

Optical Illusions

The Learned Man Knows That He Is Ignorant.

There Shall Be No Slavery Of The Mind.

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.

The Mind's Eye Can Nowhere Find Anything More Dazzling Or More Dark Than In Man; It Can Fix Itself Upon Nothing Which Is More Awful, More Complex, More Mysterious, Or More Infinite. There Is One Spectacle Grander Than The Sea, That Is The Sky; There Is One Spectacle Grander Than The Sky, That Is The Interior Of The Soul.

Inanimate Objects Sometimes Appear Endowed With A Strange Power Of Sight. A Statue Notices, A Tower Watches, The Face Of An Edifice Contemplates.

At The Shrine Of Friendship Never Say Die, Let The Wine Of Friendship Never Run Dry

There Is Something More Terrible Than A Hell Of Suffering--a Hell Of Boredom.

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

In Joined Hands There Is Still Some Token Of Hope, In The Clenched Fist None.

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

Great Blunders Are Often Made, Like Large Ropes, Of A Multitude Of Fibres.

There Is No More Sovereign Eloquence Than The Truth In Indignation.

The Holy Law Of Jesus Christ Governs Our Civilisation, But It Does Not Yet Permeate It.

There Is No Such Thing As A Little Country. The Greatness Of A People Is No More Determined By Their Numbers Than The Greatness Of A Man Is By His Height.

God Has Set His Intentions In The Flowers, In The Dawn, In The Spring, It Is His Will That We Should Love.

The Reduction Of The Universe To The Compass Of A Single Being, And The Extension Of A Single Being Until It Reaches God - That Is Love. Love Is The Salute Of The Angels To The Stars. How Sad Is The Heart When Rendered Sad By Love! How Great Is The Void Created By The Absence Of The Being Who Alone Fills The World.

A One-eyed Man Is Much More Incomplete Than A Blind Man, For He Knows What It Is That's Lacking.

Good Actions Are The Invisible Hinges On The Doors Of Heaven.

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.

Marius And Cosette Were In The Dark In Regard To Each Other. They Did Not Speak, They Did Not Bow, They Were Not Acquainted; They Saw Each Other; And, Like The Stars In The Sky Separated By Millions Of Leagues, They Lived By Gazing Upon Each Other.

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.

To Put Everything In Balance Is Good, To Put Everything In Harmony Is Better.

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

One Of The Hardest Labours Of The Just Man Is To Expunge From His Soul A Malevolence Which It Is Difficult To Efface.

Marius And Cosette Did Not Ask Where This Would Lead Them. They Looked At Themselves As Arrived. It Is A Strange Pretension For Men To Ask That Love Should Lead Them Somewhere.

Where No Plan Is Laid, Where The Disposal Of Time Is Surrendered Merely To The Chance Of Incident, Chaos Will Soon Reign.

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

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

Does There Exist An Infinity Outside Ourselves? Is That Infinity One, Immanent And Permanent, Necessarily Having Substance, Since He Is Infinite And If He Lacked Matter He Would Be Limited, Necessarily Possessing Intelligence Since He Is Infinite And, Lacking Intelligence, He Would Be In That Sense Finite. Does This Infinity Inspire In Us The Idea Of Essense, While To Ourselves We Can Only Attribute The Idea Of Existence? In Order Words, Is He Not The Whole Of Which We Are But The Part?

Dry Happiness Is Like Dry Bread. We Eat, But We Do Not Dine. I Wish For The Superfluous, For The Useless, For The Extravagant, For The Too Much, For That Which Is Not Good For Anything.

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

As For Methods Of Prayer, All Of Them Are Good As Long As They Are Sincere.

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.

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.

Press On! A Better Fate Awaits Thee.

History Has Its Truth; And So Has Legend Hers.

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

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

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

There Is Such A Thing As The Pressure Of Darkness.

Go To Sleep In Peace. God Is Awake.

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.

There Are Many Tongues To Talk, And But Few Heads To Think.

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

She Was A Lovely Blonde, With Fine Teeth. She Had Gold And Pearls For Her Dowry; But Her Gold Was On Her Head, And Her Pearls Were In Her Mouth.

God Whose Gifts In Gracious Flood Unto All Who Seek Are Sent, Only Asks You To Be Good And Is Content.

We Would Be Ashamed Of Our Best Behavior If The People Knew The Motives Of Our Behaving So.

Who Among Us Has Not Sought Peace In A Song?

To Rescue From Oblivion Even A Fragment Of A Language Which Men Have Used And Which Is In Danger Of Being Lost -that Is To Say, One Of The Elements, Whether Good Or Bad, Which Have Shaped And Complicated Civilization -is To Extend The Scope Of Social Observation And To Serve Civilization.

To Err Is Human. To Loaf Is Parisian.

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 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.

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.

In The Opera We Call Love, The Libretto Is Almost Nothing.

What Happened Between Those Two Beings? Nothing. They Were Adoring One Another.

Common Sense Is In Spite Of, Not As The Result Of Education.

It Has Become Necessary To Call The Attention Of European Governments To A Fact Which Is Apparently So Insignificant That The Governments Seem Not To Notice It. The Fact Is This: An Entire People Is Being Annihilated. Where? In Europe. Are There Witnesses? One Witness, The Entire World. Do The Governments See It? No.

Nobody Loves The Light Like The Blind Man.

Don't Educate Your Children To Be Rich. Educate Them To Be Happy, So They Know The Value Of Things, Not The Price.

I Repeat, Whether We Be Italians Or Frenchmen, Misery Concerns Us All.

Pain Is As Diverse As Man. One Suffers As One Can.

What Says The Law? You Will Not Kill. How Does It Say It? By Killing!

A Day Will Come When There Will Be No Battlefields, But Markets Opening To Commerce And Minds Opening To Ideas.

Love Is The Salutation Of The Angel To The Stars

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

The Sewer Is The Conscience Of The City.

Men Hate Those To Whom They Have To Lie.

I Believe In Religion Against The Religious; In The Pitifulness Of Orisons, And In The Sublimity Of Prayer.

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

Joy's Smile Is Much Closer To Tears Than Laughter.

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

If We Must Suffer, Let Us Suffer Nobly.

Genius: The Superhuman In Man.

To Learn To Read Is To Light A Fire; Every Syllable That Is Spelled Out Is A Spark.

I'm Religiously Opposed To Religion.

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

He Who Opens A School Door, Closes A Prison.

There Comes An Hour When Protest No Longer Suffices; After Philosophy There Must Be Action; The Strong Hand Finishes What The Idea Has Sketched.

An Increase Of Tenderness Always Ended By Boiling Over And Turning To Indignation. He Was At The Point Where We Seek To Adopt A Course, And To Accept What Tears Us Apart.

. . .where There Is No More Hope, Song Remains.

Astronomy, That Micography Of Heaven, Is The Most Magnificent Of The Sciences. ... Astronomy Has Its Clear Side And Its Luminous Side; On Its Clear Side It Is Tinctured With Algebra, On Its Luminous Side With Poetry.

God Secludes Himself; But The Thinker Listens At The Door.

Who Can Be Sure That Jean Valjean Had Not Been On The Verge Of Losing Heart And Giving Up The Struggle? In Loving He Recovered His Strength. But The Truth Is That He Was No Less Vulnerable Than Cosette. He Protected Her And She Sustained Him. Thanks To Him She Could Go Forward Into Life, And Thanks To Her He Could Continue Virtous. He Was The Child's Support And She His Mainstay. Sublime, Unfathomable Marvel Of The Balance Of Destiny!

I Am Not In The World To Care For My Life, But For Souls.

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.

...human Thought Has No Limit. At Its Risk And Peril, It Analyzes And Dissects Its Own Fascination. We Could Almost Say That, By A Sort Of Splendid Reaction, It Fascinates Nature; The Mysterious World Surrounding Us Returns What It Receives; It Is Likely That Contemplators Are Contemplated.

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