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There Exists, At The Bottom Of All Abasement And Misfortune, A Last Extreme Which Rebels And Joins Battle With The Forces Of Law And Respectability In A Desperate Struggle, Waged Partly By Cunning And Partly By Violence, At Once Sick And Ferocious, In Which It Attacks The Prevailing Social Order With The Pin-pricks Of Vice And The Hammer-blows Of Crime.

-Victor Hugo

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There Exists, At The

Victor Hugo

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There Exists, At The Bottom Of All Abasement And Misfortune, A Last Extreme Which Rebels And Joins Battle With The Forces Of Law And Respectability In A Desperate Struggle, Waged Partly By Cunning And Partly By Violence, At Once Sick And Ferocious, In Which It Attacks The Prevailing Social Order With The Pin-pricks Of Vice And The Hammer-blows Of Crime.

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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.

When Two Mouths, Made Sacred By Love, Draw Near To Each Other To Create, It Is Impossible, That Above That Ineffable Kiss There Should Not Be A Thrill In The Immense Mystery Of The Stars.

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

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

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

Not Being Heard Is No Reason For Silence.

He Did Not Study God; He Was Dazzled By Him.

There Are People Who Observe The Rules Of Honor As One Observes The Stars, From A Great Distance.

Every Idea Must Have A Visible Enfolding.

This Book Should Be Read As One Would Read The Book Of A Dead Man.

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

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

The True Artist Can Only Labor Con Amore.

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

God Will Bless You,' Said He, 'you Are An Angel Since You Take Care Of The Flowers.' 'no,' She Replied. 'i Am The Devil, But That's All The Same To Me.

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.

I Didn't Believe It Could Be So Monstrous. It's Wrong To Be So Absorbed In Divine Law As Not To Perceive Human Law. Death Belongs To God Alone. By What Right Do Men Tough That Unknown Thing?

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

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

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

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

A Bit Of Mould Is A Pleiad Of Flowers; A Nebula Is An Ant-hill Of Stars.

I Think, Therefore I Doubt.

Go To Sleep In Peace. God Is Awake.

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

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.

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

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

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

Philosophy Should Be An Energy; It Should Find Its Aim And Its Effect In The Amelioration Of Mankind.

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.

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

There Are Many Lovely Women, But No Perfect Ones.

If I Were Jesus Christ, I Would Save Judas.

Be Happy Without Picking Flaws.

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

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

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.

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 Rise At Six, To Dine At Ten, To Sup At Six, To Sleep At Ten, Makes A Man Live For Ten Times Ten.

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

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

Intelligence Is The Wife, Imagination Is The Mistress, Memory Is The Servant.

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.

All That Was Neither A City, Nor A Church, Nor A River, Nor Color, Nor Light, Nor Shadow: It Was Reverie. For A Long Time, I Remained Motionless, Letting Myself Be Penetrated Gently By This Unspeakable Ensemble, By The Serenity Of The Sky And The Melancholy Of The Moment. I Do Not Know What Was Going On In My Mind, And I Could Not Express It; It Was One Of Those Ineffable Moments When One Feels Something In Himself Which Is Going To Sleep And Something Which Is Awakening.

When Dictatorship Is A Fact, Revolution Becomes A Right.

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!

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.

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

A Tempest Ceases, A Cyclone Passes Over, A Wind Dies Down, A Broken Mast Can Be Replaced, A Leak Can Be Stopped, A Fire Extinguished, But What Will Become Of This Enormous Brute Of Bronze?

One Cannot Resist An Idea Whose Time Has Come.

I Put A Phrygian Cap On The Old Dictionary.

My Tastes Are Aristocratic, My Actions Democratic.

As We Have Explained, In First Love The Soul Is Taken Long Before The Body; Later The Body Is Taken Long Before The Soul; Sometimes The Soul Is Not Taken At All.

When Grace Combines With Wrinkles, It Is Admirable. There Is An Indescribable Light Of Dawn About Intensely Happy Old Age. . . . The Young Person Is Handsome, But The Old, Superb.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Ideas Can No More Flow Backward Than Can A River.

The Beginning As Well As The End Of All His Thoughts Was Hatred Of Human Law, That Hatred Which, If It Be Not Checked In Its Growth By Some Providential Event, Becomes, In A Certain Time, Hatred Of Society, Then Hatred Of The Human Race, And Then Hatred Of Creation, And Reveals Itself By A Vague And Incessant Desire To Injure Some Living Being, It Matters Not Who.

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

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.

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

When Liberty Returns, I Will Return.

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

The Power Of A Glance Has Been So Much Abused In Love Stories, That It Has Come To Be Disbelieved In. Few People Dare Now To Say That Two Beings Have Fallen In Love Because They Have Looked At Each Other. Yet It Is In This Way That Love Begins, And In This Way Only.

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.

Sleep Comes More Easily Than It Returns.

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

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

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

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.

He Who Despairs Is Wrong.

A Doctor’s Door Should Never Be Closed, A Priest's Door Should Always Be Open.

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

Those Who Live Are Those Who Fight.

It May Be Remarked In Passing That Success Is An Ugly Thing. Men Are Deceived By Its False Resemblences To Merit.

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

Conscience Is God Present In Man.

Everything Changes. The Only Thing That Remains Immovable Across The Centuries And Fixes The Character Of A People Is Cooking.

A Benevolent Malefactor, Merciful, Gentle, Helpful, Clement, A Convict, Returning Good For Evil, Giving Back Pardon For Hatred, Preferring Pity To Vengeance, Preferring To Ruin Himself Rather Than To Ruin His Enemy, Saving Him Who Had Smitten Him, Kneeling On The Heights Of Virtue, More Nearly Akin To An Angel Than To A Man. Javert Was Constrained To Admit To Himself That This Monster Existed. Things Could Not Go On In This Manner.

A House Is Built Of Logs And Stone, Of Tiles And Posts And Piers; A Home Is Built Of Loving Deeds That Stand A Thousand Years.

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

There Is No Vacuum In The Human Heart. Certain Demolitions Take Place, And It Is Well That They Do, But On Condition That They Are Followed By Reconstructions.

O Youth! Thou Often Tearest Thy Wings Against The Thorns Of Voluptuousness.

Friendship Exists Outside Our Modern Economy Of Scarcity... It's Not About Apportioning Vanishing Resources Of Time And Energy. Friendship Is A Blessed Relic Of The Ancient Economy Of The Gift, And The Time Freely Given To People Dear To You Actually Creates Magical Abundance.

To Rise From Error To Truth Is Rare And Beautiful.

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

It Is Grievous For A Man To Leave Behind Him A Shadow In His Own Shape.

How Frightened Hypocrisy Hastens To Defend Itself.

Every Bad Institution Of This World Ends By Suicide.

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

Close By The Rights Of Man, At The Least Set Beside Them, Are The Rights Of The Spirit.

Human Society, The World, And The Whole Of Mankind Is To Be Found In The Alphabet.

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

Let Us Study Things That Are No More. It Is Necessary To Understand Them, If Only To Avoid Them.

The Flesh Is The Upper Surface Of The Unknown.

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

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

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The Learned Man Knows That He Is Ignorant.

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

God Blesses Man, Not For Having Found But For Having Sought.

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.

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

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.

To Have Lied Is To Have Suffered.

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.

When A Person Opens A Book, He Can Never Be In Prison.

Men Hate Those To Whom They Have To Lie.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Certain Thoughts Are Prayers. There Are Moments When, Whatever Be The Attitude Of The Body, The Soul Is On Its Knees.

I Like The Laughter That Opens The Lips And The Heart, Shows At The Same Time The Pearls And The Soul.

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?

He Reached For His Pocket, And Found There, Only Reality

Slowly He Took Out The Clothes In Which, Ten Years Beforem Cosette Had Left Montfermeil; First The Little Dress, Then The Black Scarf, Then The Great Heavy Child's Shoes Cosette Could Still Almost Have Worn, So Small Was Her Foot, Then The Vest Of Very Thich Fustian, Then The Knitted Petticoat, The The Apron With Pockets, Then The Wool Stockings.... Then His Venerable White Head Fell On The Bed, This Old Stoical Heart Broke, His Face Was Swallowed Up, So To Speak, In Cosette's Clothes, And Anybody Who Had Passed Along The Staircase At That Moment Would Have Heard Irrepressible Sobbing.

"animals Are Happy," Said The Queen. "they Run No Risk Of Going To Hell." "they Are There Already," Replied Josiana.

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

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.

...mothers Are Often Fondest Of The Child Which Has Caused Them The Greatest Pain.

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.

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

Poetry Contains Philosophy As The Soul Contains Reason.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Idleness Is The Heaviest Of All Oppressions.

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

Great Buildings, Like Great Mountains, Are The Work Of Centuries.

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

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

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

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

Love Is Like A Tree, It Grows Of Its Own Accord, It Puts Down Deep Roots Into Our Whole Being.

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

The Omnipotence Of Evil Has Never Resulted In Anything But Fruitless Efforts. Our Thoughts Always Escape From Whoever Tries To Smother Them.

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

A Wretched Woman Is More Unfortunate Than A Wretched Man.

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

I Will Be Chateaubriand Or Nothing.

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

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 Repose Of Darkness Is Deeper On The Water Than On The Land.

Press On! A Better Fate Awaits Thee.

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.

When God Desires To Destroy A Thing, He Entrusts Its Destruction To The Thing Itself. Every Bad Institution Of This World Ends By Suicide.

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

Progress Is The Stride Of God.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I Have Been Loving You A Little More Every Minute Since This Morning.

There Are Moments When A Rope's End, A Pole, The Branch Of The Tree, Is Life Itself, And It Is A Frightful Thing To See A Living Being Lose His Hold Upon It, And Fall Like A Ripe Fruit.

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

Dreaming Is Happiness. Waiting Is Life.

God Manifests Himself To Us In The First Degree Through The Life Of The Universe, And In The Second Degree Through The Thought Of Man. The Second Manifestation Is Not Less Holy Than The First. The First Is Named Nature, The Second Is Named Art.

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

Exaggeration Is

The Quantity Of Civilization Is Measured By The Quality Of Imagination.

Melancholy Is The Pleasure Of Being Sad.

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

Revolutions Are Not Born Of Chance But Of Necessity.

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

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

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!

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.

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

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

Proverty And Wealth Are Comparative Sins.

I'd Rather Be Hissed At For A Good Verse, Than Applauded For A Bad One.

Enthusiasm Is The Fever Of Reason.

Love Each Other Dearly Always. There Is Scarcely Anything Else In The World But That: To Love One Another.

People Do Not Lack Strength; They Lack Will.

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.

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

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

If You Want To Civilize A Man, Begin With His Grandmother.

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

History Has Its Truth, And So Has Legend. Legendary Truth Is Of Another Nature Than Historical Truth. Legendary Truth Is Invention Whose Result Is Reality. Furthermore, History And Legend Have The Same Goal; To Depict Eternal Man Beneath Momentary Man.

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.

Work Is The Law Of Life, And To Reject It As Boredom Is To Submit To It As Torment.

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