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The Parisian Is To The French What The Athenian Was To The Greeks: No One Sleeps Better Than He, No One Is More Openly Frivolous And Idle, No One Appears More Heedless. But This Is Misleading. He Is Given To Every Kind Of Listlessness, But When There Is Glory To Be Won He May Be Inspired With Every Kind Of Fury. Give Him A Pike And He Will Enact The Tenth Of August, A Musket And You Have Austerlitz. He Was The Springboard Of Napoleon And The Mainstay Of Danton. At The Cry Of "la Patrie" He Enrols, And At The Call Of Liberty He Tears Up The Pavements. Beware Of Him!

-Victor Hugo

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The Parisian Is To

Victor Hugo

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The Parisian Is To The French What The Athenian Was To The Greeks: No One Sleeps Better Than He, No One Is More Openly Frivolous And Idle, No One Appears More Heedless. But This Is Misleading. He Is Given To Every Kind Of Listlessness, But When There Is Glory To Be Won He May Be Inspired With Every Kind Of Fury. Give Him A Pike And He Will Enact The Tenth Of August, A Musket And You Have Austerlitz. He Was The Springboard Of Napoleon And The Mainstay Of Danton. At The Cry Of "la Patrie" He Enrols, And At The Call Of Liberty He Tears Up The Pavements. Beware Of Him!

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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.

Look Not At The Face, Young Girl, Look At The Heart. The Heart Of A Handsome Young Man Is Often Deformed. There Are Hearts In Which Love Does Not Keep. Young Girl, The Pine Is Not Beautiful; It Is Not Beautiful Like The Poplar, But It Keeps Its Foliage In Winter.

...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.

I Will Be Chateaubriand Or Nothing.

Wisdom Is A Sacred Communion.

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

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!

A Garden To Walk In And Immensity To Dream In--what More Could He Ask? A Few Flowers At His Feet And Above Him The Stars.

Scepticism, That Dry Caries Of The Intelligence.

The Earlier Works Of A Man Of Genius Are Always Preferred To The Newer Ones, In Order To Prove That He Is Going Down Instead Of Up.

France Lost A Great Novel Last Night.

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.

During A Wise Man's Whole Life, His Destiny Holds His Philosophy In A State Of Siege.

We See Past Time In A Telescope And Present Time In A Microscope. Hence The Apparent Enormities Of The Present.

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

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.

Woman, Nude, Is The Blue Sky. Clouds And Garments Are An Obstacle To Contemplation. Beauty And Infinity Would Be Gazed Upon Unveiled.

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

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.

To Learn To Read Is To Light A Fire.

Nothing Makes A Man So Adventurous As An Empty Pocket.

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

All Animals Are To Be Found In Men And Each Of Theme Exists In Some Man, Sometimes Several At The Time.

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.

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

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.

From The Oyster To The Eagle, From The Swine To The Tiger, All Animals Are To Be Found In Men And Each Of Them Exists In Some Man, Sometimes Several At The Time. Animals Are Nothing But The Portrayal Of Our Virtues And Vices Made Manifest To Our Eyes, The Visible Reflections Of Our Souls. God Displays Them To Us To Give Us Food For Thought.

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

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

Great Grief Is A Divine And Terrible Radiance Which Transfigures The Wretched.

To Have Lied Is To Have Suffered.

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.

There Are No Rules For Felicity.

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'.

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.

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.

Idleness Is A Mother. She Has A Son, Robbery, And A Daughter, Hunger.

Men Hate Those To Whom They Have To Lie.

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

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

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

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

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.

Curiosity Is Gluttony. To See Is To Devour.

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

He Had Slipped, Climbed, Rolled, Searched, Walked, Persevered, That Is All. Such Is The Secret Of All Triumphs.

Try As You Will, You Cannot Annihilate That Eternal Relic Of The Human Heart, Love.

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.

Love Is A Fault; So Be It.

The Word Is The Verb, And The Verb Is God.

Anger May Be Foolish And Absurd, And One May Be Wrongly Irritated, But A Man Never Feels Outraged Unless In Some Respect He Is Fundamentally Right.

To Rise From Error To Truth Is Rare And Beautiful.

Gutenberg's Invention Of Printing Is The Greatest Event-the Mother Of Revolution

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

Religions Do A Useful Thing: They Narrow God To The Limits Of Man. Philosophy Replies By Doing A Necessary Thing: It Elevates Man To The Plane Of God.

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

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

Let Us Fear The Worst, But Work With Faith; The Best Will Always Take Care Of Itself.

...man Lives By Affirmation Even More Than He Does By Bread.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

If I Were Jesus Christ, I Would Save Judas.

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.

Earnestness Is The Salt Of Eloquence.

The World Of Sleep Has An Existence Of Its Own.

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

God Became Man, Granted. The Devil Became A Woman.

If The Soul Is Left In Darkness, Sins Will Be Committed. The Guilty One Is Not He Who Commits The Sin, But The One Who Causes The Darkness.

The Wise Man Does Not Grow Old, But Ripens.

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.

A Saint Addicted To Excessive Self-abnegation Is A Dangerous Associate; He May Infect You With Poverty, And A Stiffening Of Those Joints Which Are Needed For Advancement-in A Word, With More Renunciation Than You Care For-and So You Flee The Contagion.

The Ox Suffers, The Cart Complains.

Nothing Is Really Small; Whoever Is Open To The Deep Penetration Of Nature Knows This.

God Will Reward You,' He Said. 'you Must Be An Angel Since You Care For Flowers.

When, Like An Emir Of Tyrannic Power, Sirius Appears, And On The Horizon Black Bids Countless Stars Pursue Their Mighty Track.

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

They Adored Each Other; But Still The Permanent And The Immutable Subsist. We May Love And Laugh, Pout, Clasp Hands, Smile, And Exchange Endearments, But That Does Not Affect Eternity. Two Lovers Hide In The Dusk Of Evening, Amid Flowers And The Twittering Of Birds, And Enchant Each Other With Their Hearts Shinning In Their Eyes; But The Stars In Their Course Still Circle Through Infinite Space.

The Wicked Envy And Hate; It Is Their Way Of Admiring.

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.

Crime Is Redeemed By Remorse, But Not By A Blow Of The Axe Or Slipknot. Blood Has To Be Washed By Tears But Not By Blood.

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

One Of The Hardest Tasks Is To Extract Continually From One's Soul An Almost Inexhaustible Ill Will.

Love Is A Portion Of The Soul Itself, And It Is Of The Same Nature As The Celestial Breathing Of The Atmosphere Of Paradise.

Music Expresses That Which Cannot Be Put Into Words.

Sound And Music

One Cannot Resist An Idea Whose Time Has Come.

Teach The Ignorant As Much As You Can; Society Is Culpable In Not Providing A Free Education For All And It Must Answer For The Night Which It Produces. If The Soul Is Left In Darkness Sins Will Be Committed. The Guilty One Is Not He Who Commits The Sin, But He Who Causes The Darkness.

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

There Are Things Stronger Than The Strongest Man.

No One Can Keep A Secret Better Than A Child.

Life Is A Flower Of Which Love Is Honey.

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

Positive Thinking

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

God Has Made The Cat To Give Man The Pleasure Of Caressing The Tiger.

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.

The Wise Man Is He Who Knows When And How To Stop

Happiness Lies For Those Who Cry, Those Who Hurt, Those Who Have Searched, And Those Who Have Tried For Only They Can Appreciate The Importance Of People Who Have Touched Their Lives.

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

Women Play With Their Beauty As Children Do With Their Knives. They Wound Themselves With It.

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?

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

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

No One Ever Keeps A Secret So Well As A Child.

Keeping Secrets

The Need Of The Immaterial Is The Most Deeply Rooted Of All Needs. One Must Have Bread; But Before Bread, One Must Have The Ideal.

He Saw Before Him Two Roads, Both Equally Straight ; But He Saw Two; And That Terrified Him — Him, Who Had Never In His Life Known But One Straight Line. And, Bitter Anguish, These Two Roads Were Contradictory.

To Give Thanks In Solitude Is Enough. Thanksgiving Has Wings And Goes Where It Must Go. Your Prayer Knows Much More About It Than You Do.

A Few Feet Under The Ground Reigns So Profound A Silence, And Yet So Much Tumult On The Surface!

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

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.

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

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

Adversity Makes Men, And Prosperity Makes Monsters.

He Who Opens A School Door, Closes A Prison.

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

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

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

Now Life Has Killed The Dream I Dreamed.

Art Needs No Spur Beyond Itself.

Emotion Is Always New And The Word Has Always Served; Therein Lies The Difficulty Of Expressing Emotion.

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

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

Winter Changes Into Stone The Water Of Heaven And The Heart Of Man.

Many Great Actions Are Committed In Small Struggles.

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

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

What's Our Baggage? Only Vows, Happiness, And All Our Care, And The Flower That Sweetly Shows Nestling Lightly In Your Hair.

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

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

There Is One Spectacle Grander Than The Sea, That Is The Sky.

And If It Happened To Be A Christmas-night When The Great Bell Seemed To Rattle In Its Throat As It Called The Faithful To The Midnight Mass, There Was Such An Indescribable Air Of Life Spread Over The Sombre Facade That The Great Door-way Looked As If It Were Swallowing The Entire Crowd, And The Rose-window Staring At Them.

Nothing Awakens Reminiscence Like An Aroma.

Phenomena Intersect; To See But One Is To See Nothing.

Dark Error's Other Hidden Side Is Truth.

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

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

Mother Daughter

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

Whom Man Kills, Him God Restoreth To Life.

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

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

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

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

Prayer Is An August Avowal Of Ignorance.

Ecclesiastes Names Thee Almighty, The Maccabees Name Thee Creator, The Epistle To The Ephesians Names Thee Liberty, Baruch Names Thee Immensity, The Psalms Name Thee Wisdom And Truth, John Names Thee Light, The Book Of Kings Names Thee Lord, Exodus Names Thee Providence, Leviticus Sanctity, Esdras Justice, Creation Names Thee God, Man Names Thee Father; But Solomon Names Thee Compassion, Which Is The Most Beautiful Of All Thy Names.

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.

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.

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.

The Man Who Does Not Know Other Languages, Unless He Is A Man Of Genius, Necessarily Has Deficiencies In His Ideas.

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

Women Are More Credulous Than Men.

A Bird Sings, A Child Prattles, But It Is The Same Hymn; Hymn Indistinct, Inarticulate, But Full Of Profound Meaning.

Yes, The Brutalities Of Progress Are Called Revolutions

By Making Himself A Priest Made Himself A Demon.

Freedom Begins Where It Ends Ignorance.

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!

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.

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

Jean Prouvaire Was Timid Only In Repose. Once Excited, He Burst Forth, A Sort Of Mirth Accentuated His Enthusiasm, And He Was At Once Both Laughing And Lyric.

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.

As With Stomachs, We Should Pity Minds That Do Not Eat.

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

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.

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!

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

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.

The Wind Of Revolutions Is Not Tractable.

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

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

Nations, Like Stars, Are Entitled To Eclipse. All Is Well, Provided The Light Returns And The Eclipse Does Not Become Endless Night. Dawn And Resurrection Are Synonymous. The Reappearance Of The Light Is The Same As The Survival Of The Soul.

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

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.

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

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.

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

...there Is A Point When The Unfortunate And The Infamous Are Associated And Confused In A Word, A Mortal Word, Les Miserables

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)

When Liberty Returns, I Will Return.

The Nearer I Approach The End, The Plainer I Hear Around Me The Immortal Symphonies Of The Worlds Which Invite Me. It Is Marvelous, Yet Simple.

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

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

Strong And Bitter Words Indicate A Weak Cause.

When Dictatorship Is A Fact, Revolution Becomes A Right.

To Love Beauty Is To See Light.

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

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.

Often The Losing Of A Battle Leads To The Winning Of Progress. Less Glory But Greater Liberty: The Drum Is Silent And The Voices Of Reason Can Be Heard.

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.

My Revenge Is Fraternity! No More Frontiers! The Rhine For Everyone! Let Us Be The Same Republic, Let Us Be The United States Of Europe, Let Us Be The Continental Federation, Let Us Be European Liberty, Let Us Be Universal Peace!

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.

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

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

Does Not Beauty Confer A Benefit Upon Us, Even By The Simple Fact Of Being Beautiful?

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

Are You Afraid Of The Good You Might Do?

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

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.

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

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.

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