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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.

-Victor Hugo

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The Spirit Of God,

Victor Hugo

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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.

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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 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.

Promise To Give Me A Kiss On My Brow When I Am Dead.--i Shall Feel It.

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.

Whenever A Man's Friends Begin To Compliment Him About Looking Young, He May Be Sure That They Think He Is Growing Old.

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

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

Are You Afraid Of The Good You Might Do?

Not Seeing People Allows You To Think Of Them As Perfect In All Kinds Of Ways.

Change Your Opinions, Keep To Your Principles; Change Your Leaves, Keep Intact Your Roots.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Do Not Let It Be Your Aim To Be Something, But To Be Someone.

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

I Put A Phrygian Cap On The Old Dictionary.

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

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

Genius Is A Promontory Jutting Out Into The Infinite.

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

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

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

Greater Than The Tread Of Mighty Armies Is An Idea Whose Time Has Come.

In The Vast Cosmical Changes, The Universal Life Comes And Goes In Unknown Quantities, ... Sowing An Animalcule Here, Crumbling A Star There, Oscillating And ... Entangling, From The Highest To The Lowest, All Activities In The Obscurity Of A Dizzying Mechanism, Hanging The Flight Of An Insect Upon The Movement Of The Earth... Enormous Gearing, Whose First Motor Is The Gnat, And Whose Last Wheel Is The Zodiac.

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

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.

Love Is A Fault; So Be It.

Everything Being A Constant Carnival, There Is No Carnival Left.

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

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

The Earth Is A Great Piece Of Stupidity.

The Left-handed Are Precious; They Take Places Which Are Inconvenient For The Rest.

Stupidity Talks, Vanity Acts.

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.

To Think Of Shadows Is A Serious Thing.

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.

Women Are More Credulous Than Men.

Poetry Contains Philosophy As The Soul Contains Reason.

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

Love Is The Salutation Of The Angel To The Stars

Too Much Improvisation Leaves The Mind Stupidly Void.

...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.

Love Is Reducing The Universe To One Being.

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

Nigeria Independence

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.

If I Speak, I Am Condemned. If I Stay Silent, I Am Damned!

Conscience Is God Present In Man.

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

One Can No More Keep The Mind From Returning To An Idea Than The Sea From Returning To A Shore. For A Sailor, This Is Called The Tide; In The Case Of The Guilty It Is Called Remorse. God Stirs Up The Soul As Well As The Ocean.

Ma Vie Est Une énigme Dont Ton Nom Est Le Mot. (my Life Is An Enigma, Of Which Your Name Is The Word.)

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

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

On This Point, The Priest And The Philosopher Agree: We Must Die.

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

Waterloo Is A Battle Of The First Rank Won By A Captain Of The Second

He, Who Every Morning Plans The Transactions Of The Day, And Follows That Plan, Carries A Thread That Will Guide Him Through A Labyrinth Of The Most Busy Life.

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.

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.

His Universal Compassion Was Due Less To Natural Instinct, Than To A Profound Conviction, A Sum Of Thoughts That In The Course Of Living Had Filtered Through To His Heart: For In The Nature Of Man, As In Rock, There May Be Channels Hollowed By The Dropping Of Water, And These Can Never Be Destroyed.

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

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?

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.

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.

What Is The Cat?" He Exclaimed. "it Is A Corrective. God, Having Made The Mouse, Said, 'i've Made A Blunder.' And He Made The Cat. The Cat Is The Erratum Of The Mouse. The Mouse, Plus The Cat, Is The Revised And Corrected Proof Of Creation.

The Greatest Products Of Architecture Are Less The Works Of Individuals Than Of Society; Rather The Offspring Of A Nation's Effort, Than The Inspired Flash Of A Man Of Genius.

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

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.

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.

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

God Knows Better Than We Do What We Need.

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

Nothing Is More Dangerous Than Discontinued Labor; It Is Habit Lost. A Habit Easy To Abandon, Difficult To Resume.

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

Keeping Secrets

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.

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

And So, Being In Heaven, It Was Easy For Him To Lose Sight Of Earth.

To Be A Saint Is The Exception; To Be A Just Person Is The Rule. Err, Stumble, Commit Sin, But Be One Of The Just.

There Is In Every Village A Torch - The Teacher; And An Extinguisher - The Priest.

Sleep Comes More Easily Than It Returns.

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

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

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.

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

Another Story Must Begin!

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

If God Had Intended That Man Should Go Backward, He Would Have Given Him Eyes In The Back Of His Head.

Men Are Still Men. The Despot's Wickedness Comes Of Ill Teaching, And Of Power's Excess,-- Comes Of The Purple He From Childhood Wears, Slaves Would Be Tyrants If The Chance Were Theirs.

Life Is A Flower Of Which Love Is Honey.

...we Pray Together, We Are Afraid Together, And Then We Go To Sleep. Even If Satan Came Into The House, No One Would Interfere. After All, What Is There To Fear In This House? There Is Always One With Us Who Is The Strongest. Satan May Visit Our House, But The Good Lord Lives Here.

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

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

He Sought...to Transform The Grief Which Looks Down Into The Grave By Showing It The Grief Which Looks Up To The Stars.

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

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

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

The Thirst For The Infinite Proves Infinity.

M. Myriel Had To Undergo The Fate Of Every Newcomer In A Little Town, Where There Are Many Mouths Which Talk, And Very Few Heads Which Think.

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!

Revolution Is The Larva Of Civilization.

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

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

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

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

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

Man Lives More By Affirmation Than By Bread.

The Soul Has Illusions As The Bird Has Wings: It Is Supported By Them.

I Represent A Party Which Does Not Yet Exist: The Party Revolution-civilization. This Party Will Make The Twentieth Century. There Will Issue From It First The United States Of Europe, Then The United States Of The World.

Such Is The Remorseless Progression Of Human Society, Shedding Lives And Souls As It Goes On Its Way. It Is An Ocean Into Which Men Sink Who Have Been Cast Out By The Law And Consigned, With Help Most Cruelly Withheld, To Moral Death. The Sea Is The Pitiless Social Darkness Into Which The Penal System Casts Those It Has Condemned, An Unfathomable Waste Of Misery. The Human Soul, Lost In Those Depths, May Become A Corpse. Who Shall Revive It?

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

Blessed Be Providence Which Has Given To Each His Toy: The Doll To The Child, The Child To The Woman, The Woman To The Man, The Man To The Devil!

There Are Many Lovely Women, But No Perfect Ones.

Men Become Accustomed To Poison By Degrees.

The Greatest Blunders, Like The Thickest Ropes, Are Often Compounded Of A Multitude Of Strands. Take The Rope Apart, Separate It Into The Small Threads That Compose It, And You Can Break Them One By One. You Think, That Is All There Was! But Twist Them All Together And You Have Something Tremendous.

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

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.

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.

You Are Adorable, Mademoiselle. I Study Your Feet With The Microscope And Your Soul With The Telescope.

Dreaming Is Happiness. Waiting Is Life.

Large, Heavy, Ragged Black Clouds Hung Like Crape Hammocks Beneath The Starry Cope Of The Night. You Would Have Said That They Were The Cobwebs Of The Firmament.

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.

When I Speak To You About Myself, I Am Speaking To You About Yourself. How Is It You Don't See That?

An Intelligent Hell Would Be Better Than A Stupid Paradise.

Habit Is The Nursery Of Errors.

The Rich's Paradise Was Created By The Poor's Hell.

The Learned Man Knows That He Is Ignorant.

Night And The Day, When United, Bring Forth The Beautiful Light.

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.

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

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

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

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

Do Not Economize On The Hymeneal Rites; Do Not Prune Them Of Their Splendor, Nor Split Farthings On The Day When You Are Radiant. A Wedding Is Not House-keeping.

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

Scepticism, That Dry Caries Of The Intelligence.

In 1815, M. Charles-francois-bienvenu Myriel Was Bishop Of D—— He Was An Old Man Of About Seventy-five Years Of Age; He Had Occupied The See Of D—— Since 1806.

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!

Take All Reasonable Advantage Of That Which The Present May Offer You. It Is The Only Time Which Is Ours. Yesterday Is Buried Forever, And To-morrow We May Never See.

To Sum Up All, Let It Be Known That Science And Religion Are Two Identical Words. The Learned Do Not Suspect This, No More Do The Religious. These Two Words Express The Two Sides Of The Same Fact, Which Is The Infinite. Religion-science, This Is The Future Of The Human Mind.

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

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!

A Cannonball Travels Only Two Thousand Miles An Hour; Light Travels Two Hundred Thousand Miles A Second. Such Is The Superiority Of Jesus Christ Over Napoleon.

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.

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

To Love Is The Half Of To Believe.

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.

The Poor Man Shuddered, Overflowed With An Angelic Joy; He Declared In His Transport That This Would Last Through Life; He Said To Himself That He Really Had Not Suffered Enough To Deserve Such Radiant Happiness, And He Thanked God, In The Depths Of His Soul, For Having Permitted That He, A Miserable Man, Should Be So Loved By This Innocent Being.

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

He 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.

Wisdom Is A Sacred Communion.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

I'm Not In The World To Guard My Own Life, But To Guard Souls

I Write With One Hand, But I Fight With Both.

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

Now Life Has Killed The Dream I Dreamed.

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

There Must Be People Who Pray Even For Those Who Never Pray.

The Clouds, - The Only Birds That Never Sleep.

You Have Enemies? Why, It Is The Story Of Every Man Who Has Done A Great Deed Or Created A New Idea. It Is The Cloud Which Thunders Around Everything That Shines. Fame Must Have Enemies, As Light Must Have Gnats. Do No Bother Yourself About It; Disdain. Keep Your Mind Serene As You Keep Your Life Clear.

Revolutions Are Not Born Of Chance But Of Necessity.

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

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.

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

I Will Be Chateaubriand Or Nothing.

God Made Only Water, But Man Made Wine.

Love Is The Only Future God Offers.

The Most Ferocious Animals Are Disarmed By Caresses To Their Young.

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.

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

To Have Lied Is To Have Suffered.

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

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.

My Greatness Does Not Extend To This Shelf.

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.

I'd Like A Drink. I Desire To Forget Life. Life Is A Hideous Invention By Somebody I Don't Know. It Doesn't Last, And It's Good For Nothing. You Break Your Neck Simply Living.

I Am For Religion, Against Religions.

Against Religion

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

Happiness Wishes Everybody Happy.

Earnestness Is The Salt Of Eloquence.

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

Whatever Causes Night In Our Souls May Leave Stars.

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

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.

Art Moves. Hence Its Civilizing Power.

People Do Not Lack Strength; They Lack Will.

Love Resembles A Tree: It Bends Under Its Own Weight, Deeply Rooted In Our Being And Sometimes Turns Green In The Ruins Of A Heart.

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

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

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

As We Have Said, Robust Souls Are Sometimes Almost, But Not Entirely, Overthrown By Strokes Of Misfortune....despair Has Steps Leading Upward. From Total Depression We Rise To Despondency, From Despondency To Affliction, From Affliction To Melancholy. Melancholy Is A Twilight State In Which Suffering Transmutes Into A Somber Joy....melancholy Is The Enjoyment Of Being Sad.

To Divinise Is Human, To Humanise Is Divine.

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.

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