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Lastly, This Threefold Poetry Flows From Three Great Sources - The Bible, Homer, Shakespeare.... The Bible Before The Iliad, The Iliad Before Shakespeare.

-Victor Hugo

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Lastly, This Threefold Poetry

Victor Hugo

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Lastly, This Threefold Poetry Flows From Three Great Sources - The Bible, Homer, Shakespeare.... The Bible Before The Iliad, The Iliad Before Shakespeare.

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And Then, Strange To Say, The First Symptom Of True Love In A Young Man Is Timidity; In A Girl, It Is Boldness.

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.

Mirrors, Those Revealers Of The Truth, Are Hated; That Does Not Prevent Them From Being Of Use.

Women Are More Credulous Than Men.

Dear God! How Beauty Varies In Nature And Art. In A Woman The Flesh Must Be Like Marble; In A Statue The Marble Must Be Like Flesh.

For The Rest, He Was The Same To All Men, The Fashionable World And The Ordinary People. He Judged Nothing In Haste, Or Without Taking Account Of The Cirumstances. He Said, 'let Me See How The Fault Arose.

What Is Called Honors And Dignities, And Even Honor And Dignity, Is Generally Fool's Gold.

Wide Horizons Lead The Soul To Broad Ideas; Circumscribed Horizons Engender Narrow Ideas; This Sometimes Condemns Great Hearts To Become Small Minded.broad Ideas Hated By Narrow Ideas,-this Is The Very Struggle Of Progress.

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.

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.

Never Laugh At Those Who Suffer; Suffer Sometimes Those Who Laugh.

I Think, Therefore I Doubt.

Superstitions, Bigotries, Hypocrisies, Prejudices, These Phantoms, Phantoms Though They Be, Cling To Life; They Have Teeth And Nails In Their Shadowy Substance, And We Must Grapple With Them Individually And Make War On Them Without Truce; For It Is One Of Humanity's Inevitabilities To Be Condemned To Eternal Struggle With Phantoms.

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.

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

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.

What I Feel For You Seems Less Of Earth And More Of A Cloudless Heaven.

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.

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!

A Thousand Men Enslaved Fear One Beast Free.

Humanity Is Our Common Lot. All Men Are Made Of The Same Clay. There Is No Difference, At Least Here On Earth, In The Fate Assigned To Us. We Come Of The Same Void, Inhabit The Same Flesh, Are Dissolved In The Same Ashes. But Ignorance Infecting The Human Substance Turns It Black, And That Incurable Blackness, Gaining Possession Of The Soul, Becomes Evil.

My Misfortune Is That I Still Resemble A Man Too Much. I Should Liked To Be Wholly A Beast Like That Goat. - Quasimodo

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

Lastly, This Threefold Poetry Flows From Three Great Sources - The Bible, Homer, Shakespeare.... The Bible Before The Iliad, The Iliad Before Shakespeare.

Superstition, Bigotry And Prejudice, Ghosts Though They Are, Cling Tenaciously To Life; They Are Shades Armed With Tooth And Claw. They Must Be Grappled With Unceasingly, For It Is A Fateful Part Of Human Destiny That It Is Condemned To Wage Perpetual War Against Ghosts. A Shade Is Not Easily Taken By The Throat And Destroyed.

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

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

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?

The Mountains, The Forest, And The Sea, Render Men Savage; They Develop The Fierce, But Yet Do Not Destroy The Human.

A Shadow Is Hard To Seize By The Throat And Dash To The Ground.

...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.

Those Who Every Morning Plan The Transactions Of The Day And Follow Out That Plan Carry A Thread That Will Guide Them Through The Labyrinth Of The Most Busy Life. The Orderly Arrangement Of Their Time Is Like A Ray Of Light Which Darts Itself Through All Their Occupations. But Where No Plan Is Laid, Where The Disposal Of Time Is Surrendered Merely To The Chance Of Incidents, Chaos Will Soon Reign.

I Refuse The Oration Of All Churches. I Ask A Prayer Of All Souls. I Believe In God.

As The Purse Is Emptied, The Heart Is Filled.

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

In The Domain Of Art There Is No Light Without Heat.

Whom Man Kills, Him God Restoreth To Life.

The Beautiful Is As Useful As The Useful." He Added After A Moment’s Silence, "perhaps More So.

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

There Are No Trifles In The Human Story, No Trifling Leaves On The Tree.

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.

Each Of Our Passions, Even Love, Has A Stomach That Must Not Be Overloaded. We Must In Everything Write The Word 'finis' In Time; We Must Restrain Ourselves, When It Becomes Urgent; We Must Draw The Bolt On The Appetite, Play A Fantasia On The Violin, Then Break The Strings With Our Own Hand. The Wise Man Is He Who Knows When And How To Stop.

One Believes Others Will Do What He Will Do To Himself.

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.

A Breath Of Paris Preserves The Soul.

Slaves Would Be Tyrants Were The Chance Theirs.

The Pupil Dilates In Darkness And In The End Finds Light, Just As The Soul Dilates In Misfortune And In The End Finds God.

The Flesh Is The Upper Surface Of The Unknown.

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

The Fact Is That The Beautiful, Humanly Speaking, Is Merely Form Considered In Its Simplest Aspect, In Its Most Perfect Symmetry, In Its Most Entire Harmony With Our Make-up. Thus The Ensemble That It Offers Us Is Always Complete, But Restricted Like Ourselves. What We Call The Ugly, On The Contrary, Is A Detail Of A Great Whole Which Eludes Us, And Which Is In Harmony, Not With Man But With All Creation. That Is Why It Constantly Presents Itself To Us In New But Incomplete Aspects.

Nothing Can Be Sadder Or More Profound Than To See A Thousand Things For The First And Last Time.

Algebra Applies To The Clouds.

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.

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?

There Is A Spectacle More Grand Than The Sea; It Is Heaven; There Is A Spectacle More Grand Than Heaven; It Is The Conscience.

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

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

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

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.

We Are For Religion Against The Religions.

The Aim Of Art Is Almost Divine: To Bring To Life Again If It Is Writing History, To Create If It Is Writing Poetry.

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

Peace Is The Virtue Of Civilization. War Is Its Crime.

First Problem. To Produce Wealth. Second Problem. To Distribute It.

There Is One Thing Stronger Than All The Armies In The World, And That Is An Idea Whose Time As Come.

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

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

People Do Not Lack Strength; They Lack Will.

Despotism Is A Long Crime.

You Have Enemies? Why, It Is The Story Of Every Man Who Has Done A Great Deed Or Created A New Idea.

Life's Greatest Happiness Is To Be Convinced We Are Loved.

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

Nothing Makes A Man So Adventurous As An Empty Pocket.

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.

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.

Go To Sleep In Peace. God Is Awake.

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

This Conflict Between Right And Fact Has Endured Since The Origins Of Society. To Bring The Duel To An End, To Consolidate The Pure Ideal With The Human Reality, To Make The Right Peacefully Interpenetrate The Fact, And The Fact The Right, This Is The Work Of The Wise.

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?

Many Great Actions Are Committed In Small Struggles.

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

Strong And Bitter Words Indicate A Weak Cause.

Children At Once Accept Joy And Happiness With Quick Familiarity, Being Themselves Naturally All Happiness And Joy.

We Are Reassured Almost As Foolishly As We Are Alarmed; Human Nature Is So Constituted.

To Love Beauty Is To See Light.

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

He Would Give All Of His Clothes To His Servant, Admonishing Him Not To Return Them Until He Had Completed His Day's Work.

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

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.

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.

My Day's Work Will Begin Again The Next Morning. The Tomb Is Not A Blind Alley.

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

When The Heart Is Dry The Eye Is Dry.

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.

At That Moment Of Love, A Moment When Passion Is Absolutely Silent Under Omnipotence Of Ecstasy, Marius, Pure Seraphic Marius, Would Have Been More Capable Of Visiting A Woman Of The Streets Than Of Raising Cosette’s Dress Above The Ankle. Once On A Moonlit Night, Cosette Stopped To Pick Up Something From The Ground, Her Dress Loosened And Revealed The Swelling Of Her Breasts. Marius Averted His Eyes.

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

Is It Not A Thing Divine To Have A Smile Which, None Know How, Has The Power To Lighten The Weight Of That Enormous Chain Which All The Living In Common Drag Behind Them?

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.

When Liberty Returns, I Will Return.

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.

Smallness In A Great Man Seems Smaller By Its Disproportion With All The Rest.

Yes, The Brutalities Of Progress Are Called Revolutions

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

The Miserable's Name Is Man; He Is Agonizing In All Climes, And He Is Groaning In All Languages.

Whenever We Encounter The Infinite In Man, However Imperfectly Understood, We Treat It With Respect. Whether In The Synagogue, The Mosque, The Pagoda, Or The Wigwam, There Is A Hideous Aspect Which We Execrate And A Sublime Aspect Which We Venerate. So Great A Subject For Spiritual Contemplation, Such Measureless Dreaming - The Echo Of God On The Human Wall!

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.

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.

The Eye Of A Man Should Be Still More Reverent Before The Rising Of A Young Maiden Than Before The Rising Of A Star. The Possibility Of Touch Should Increase Respect. The Down Of The Peach, The Dust Of The Plum, The Radiated Crystal Of Snow, The Butterfly’s Wing Powdered With Feathers, Are Gross Things Beside That Chastity That Does Not Even Know It Is Chaste. The Young Maiden Is Only The Glimmer Of A Dream And Is Not Yet Statue. Her Alcove Is Hidden In The Shadows Of The Ideal. The Indiscreet Touch Of The Eye Desecrates This Dim Penumbra. Here, To Gaze, Is To Profane.

If You Don't Build Castles In The Air You Won't Build Anything On The Ground.

Castles In The Air

Should We Continue To Look Upwards? Is The Light We Can See In The Sky One Of Those Which Will Presently Be Extinguished? The Ideal Is Terrifying To Behold... Brilliant But Threatened On All Sides By The Dark Forces That Surround It: Nevertheless, No More In Danger Than A Star In The Jaws Of The Clouds.

These Are True Felicities. No Joy Beyond These Joys. Love Is The Only Ecstasy, Everything Else Weeps

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

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.

And Do You Know Monsieur Marius? I Believe I Was A Little In Love With You.

We Must Never Fear Robbers Or Murderers. They Are Dangers From Outside, Small Dangers. It Is Ourselves We Have To Fear. Prejudice Is The Real Robber, Vice The Real Murderer. Why Should We Be Troubled By A Threat To Our Person Or Our Pocket? What We Have To Beware Of Is The Threat To Our Souls'.

Perseverance, Secret Of All Triumphs.

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

The Guillotine Is The Ultimate Expression Of Law, And Its Name Is Vengeance; It Is Not Neutral, Nor Does It Allow Us To Remain Neutral.

To Introduce A New Play Only Six Weeks After Another Has Been Banned Is Also A Way To Speak One's Piece To The Government. It Proves That Art And Liberty Can Grow Back In One Night Under The Clumsy Foot Which Crushes Them.

Nature, Like A Kind And Smiling Mother, Lends Herself To Our Dreams And Cherishes Our Fancies.

Revolutions Spring Not From Accident, But From Necessity. A Revolution Is A Return From The Factitious To The Real. It Takes Place Because It Must.

No One Knows Like A Woman How To Say Things Which Are At Once Gentle And Deep.

Monastic Incarceration Is Castration.

Another Story Must Begin!

Without At All Invalidating What We Have Just Said, We Believe That A Perpetual Remembrance Of The Tomb Is Proper For The Living. On This Point, The Priest And The Philosopher Agree: We Must Die.

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

Whatever Causes Night In Our Souls May Leave Stars. Cimourdain Was Full Of Virtues And Truth, But They Shine Out Of A Dark Background.

The Soul In The Darkness Sins, But The Real Sinner Is He Who Caused The Darkness.

The Earth Is A Great Piece Of Stupidity.

Now Life Has Killed The Dream I Dreamed.

Those Who Live Are Those Who Fight.

God Was Bored By Him.

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

In Short, I Am Doing What I Can, I Suffer With The Same Universal Suffering, And I Try To Assuage It, I Possess Only The Puny Forces Of A Man, And I Cry To All: “help Me!

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

I Will Be Chateaubriand Or Nothing.

Do You Know What Friendship Is... It Is To Be Brother And Sister; Two Souls Which Touch Without Mingling, Two Fingers On One Hand.

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.

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

If It Were (is It Not) Outrageous That Society Should Treat With Such Rigid Precision Those Of Its Members Who Were Most Poorly Endowed In The Distribution Or Wealth That Chance Had Made, And Who Were, Therefore, Most Worthy Of Indulgence.

There Is A Sacred Horror About Everything Grand. It Is Easy To Admire Mediocrity And Hills; But Whatever Is Too Lofty, A Genius As Well As A Mountain, An Assembly As Well As A Masterpiece, Seen Too Near, Is Appalling.

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.

For Prying Into Any Human Affairs, Non Are Equal To Those Whom It Does Not Concern.

Sleep Comes More Easily Than It Returns.

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

I'm Religiously Opposed To Religion.

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

A Fixed Idea Ends In Madness Or Heroism.

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

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.

What Makes Night Within Us May Leave Stars.

There Is Such A Thing As The Pressure Of Darkness.

A Day Will Come When A Cannon Will Be Exhibited In Museums, Just As Instruments Of Torture Are Now, And The People Will Be Astonished That Such A Thing Could Have Been.

In Saying No To Progress, It Is Not The Future Which They Condemn, But Themselves. They Give Themselves A Melancholy Disease; They Inoculate Themselves With The Past. There Is But One Way Of Refusing Tomorrow, That Is To Die.

The Man Is Placed Where The Earth Ends, The Woman, Where The Heaven Starts.

Not Seeing People Permits Us To Imagine Them With Every Perfection.

A Great Artist Is A Great Man In A Great Child.

Life Is The Flower For Which Love Is The Honey.

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.

Liberation Is Not Deliverance.

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!

When A Man Is Out Of Sight, It Is Not Too Long Before He Is Out Of Mind.

Well, For Us, In History Where Goodness Is A Rare Pearl, He Who Was Good Almost Takes Precedence Over He Who Was Great.

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

It Is Often Our Best Friends Who Throw Us Down.

Genius Is A Promontory Jutting Out Into The Infinite.

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.

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.

Be As A Bird Perched On A Frail Branch That She Feels Bending Beneath Her, Still She Sings Away All The Same, Knowing She Has Wings.

It Is Man's Consolation That The Future Is To Be A Sunrise Instead Of A Sunset.

There Is Will In The Thought, There Is None In The Dream. The Dream, Which Is Completely Spontaneous, Takes And Keeps, Even In The Gigantic And The Ideal, The Form Of Our Mind. Nothing Springs More Directly And More Sincerely From The Very Bottom Of Our Souls Than Our Unreflected And Indefinite Aspirations Towards The Splendours Of Destiny.

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

Popularity - A Piece Of Faded Tinsel, That Is Out Of Date.

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

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

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 A Terrible Thing To Be Happy! How Pleased We Are With It! How All-sufficient We Think It! How, Being In Possession Of The False Aim Of Life, Happiness, We Forget The True Aim, Duty!

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

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

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

The Man Who Fights Against His Own Country Is Never A Hero.

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

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

If She Gives Me All Her Time It Is Because I Have All Her Heart.

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

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

Civilization Survives On The Constant Discovery Of Amity And An Equal Supply Of Damnation.

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

That Is To Be Two And To Be But One. A Man And A Woman Mingled Into One Angel. It Is Heaven.

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.

Primitive Times Are Lyrical, Ancient Times Epical, Modern Times Dramatic. The Ode Sings Of Eternity, The Epic Imparts Solemnity Tohistory, The Drama Depicts Life. The Characteristic Of The First Poetry Is Ingeniousness, Of The Second, Simplicity, Of The Third, Truth.

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

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.

Gavroche Had Fallen Only To Rise Again; He Sat Up, A Long Stream Of Blood Rolled Down His Face, He Raised Both Arms In Air, Looked In The Direction Whence The Shot Came, And Began To Sing.

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

There Is But One Way Of Refusing To-morrow, That Is To Die.

Stupidity Talks, Vanity Acts.

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

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.

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!

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