Background Image

...

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!

-Victor Hugo

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Who Can Be Sure

Victor Hugo

...

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!

Views: 27214

Topic

More From Victor Hugo

Beauty Is As Useful As The Useful. More So, Perhaps. (le Beau Est Aussi Utile Que L'utile. Plus Peut-etre.)

The Paradise Of The Rich Is Made Out Of The Hell Of The Poor.

To Destroy Abuses Is Not Enough; Habits Must Also Be Changed. The Windmill Has Gone, But The Wind Is Still There." ~old Man G--- To Monseigneur Bienvenu Myriel

You Look At A Star For Two Reasons, Because It Is Luminous, And Because It Is Impenetrable. You Have Beside You A Sweeter Radiance And A Greater Mystery, Woman.

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.

Melancholy Is The Pleasure Of Being Sad.

A War Between Europeans Is A Civil War.

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.

This Child Whom We Love, Brings Daylight Into Our Soul.

He Loved Books; Books Are Cold But Safe Friends.

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

Poetry Contains Philosophy As The Soul Contains Reason.

These Are Dark Radiances. They Have No Suspicion That They Are To Be Pitied. Certainly They Are So. He Who Does Not Weep Does Not See. They Are To Be Admired And Pitied, As One Would Both Pity And Admire A Being At Once Night And Day, Without Eyes Beneath His Lashes But With A Star On His Brow.

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.

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.

What Would Be Ugly In A Garden Constitutes Beauty In A Mountain.

Wherever The Turkish Hoof Trods, No Grass Grows.

Women Are More Credulous Than Men.

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

The Most Powerful Symptom Of Love Is A Tenderness Which Becomes At Times Almost Insupportable.

It Is God Who Makes Woman Beautiful, It Is The Devil Who Makes Her Pretty.

People Generally Will Soon Understand That Writers Should Be Judged, Not According To Rules And Species, Which Are Contrary To Nature And Art, But According To The Immutable Principles Of The Art Of Composition, And The Special Laws Of Their Individual Temperaments.

Puns Are The Droppings Of Soaring Wits.

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

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

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.

Now Life Has Killed The Dream I Dreamed.

The Learned Man Knows That He Is Ignorant.

War Can Only Be Qualified By Its Object, And There Is Neither Foreign War Nor Civil War, There Is Only Just Or Unjust War.

Be Like The Bird Who, Pausing In Her Flight Awhile On Boughs Too Slight, Feels Them Give Way Beneath Her, And Yet Sings, Knowing She Hath Wings.

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

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

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

Men Become Accustomed To Poison By Degrees.

These Greek Capitals, Black With Age, And Quite Deeply Graven In The Stone, With I Know Not What Signs Peculiar To Gothic Calligraphy Imprinted Upon Their Forms And Upon Their Attitudes, As Though With The Purpose Of Revealing That It Had Been A Hand Of The Middle Ages Which Had Inscribed Them There, And Especially The Fatal And Melancholy Meaning Contained In Them, Struck The Author Deeply.

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.

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

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

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

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

A Man Without A Woman Is Like A Pistol Without A Trigger; It Is The Woman Who Makes The Man Go Off.

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.

Do You Hear The People Sing Lost In The Valley Of The Night? It Is The Music Of A People Who Are Climbing To The Light. For The Wretched Of The Earth There Is A Flame That Never Dies. Even The Darkest Night Will End And The Sun Will Rise.

In Winter There Is No Heat, No Light, No Noon, Evening Touches Morning, There Is Fog, And Mist, The Window Is Frosted, And You Cannot See Clearly. The Sky Is But The Mouth Of A Cave. The Whole Day Is The Cave.... Frightful Season! Winter Changes Into Stone The Water Of Heaven And The Heart Of Man.

Of All The Things That God Has Made, The Human Heart Is The One Which Sheds The Most Light, Alas! And The Most Darkness.

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

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

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

Dark Error's Other Hidden Side Is Truth.

It Is Ourselves We Have To Fear. Prejudice Is The Real Robber, And Vice The Real Murderer.

One Resists The Invasion Of Armies; One Does Not Resist The Invasion Of Ideas.

We Do Not Comprehend Everything, But We Insult Nothing.

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.

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.

All Roads Are Blocked To A Philosophy Which Reduces Everything To The Word 'no.' To 'no' There Is Only One Answer And That Is 'yes.

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

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.

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

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.

All Roads Are Blocked To A Philosophy Which Reduces Everything To The Word "no." To "no" There Is Only One Answer And That Is "yes." Nihilism Has No Substance. There Is No Such Thing As Nothingness, And Zero Does Not Exist. Everything Is Something. Nothing Is Nothing. Man Lives More By Affirmation Than By Bread.

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.

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

Every Bad Institution Of This World Ends By Suicide.

He Who Is Not Master Of His Own Thoughts Is Not Accountable For His Own Deeds.

Nothing Is More Dangerous Than To Stop Working. It Is A Habit That Can Soon Be Lost, One That Is Easily Neglected And Hard To Resume. A Measure Of Day-dreaming Is A Good Thing, Like A Drug Prudently Used ... But Too Much Submerges And Drowns. Woe To The Intellectual Worker Who Allows Himself To Lapse Wholly From Positive Thinking Into Day-dreaming. He Thinks He Can Easily Change Back, And Tells Himself That It Is All One. He Is Wrong! To Substitute Day-dreaming For Thought Is To Confuse Poison With A Source Of Nourishment.

Positive Thinking

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.

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

What Was More Needed By This Old Man Who Divided The Leisure Hours Of His Life, Where He Had So Little Leisure, Between Gardening In The Daytime, And Contemplation At Night? Was Not This Narrow Enclosure, With The Sky For A Background, Enough To Enable Him To Adore God In His Most Beautiful As Well As In His Most Sublime Works? Indeed, Is Not That All, And What More Can Be Desired? A Little Garden To Walk, And Immensity To Reflect Upon. At His Feet Something To Cultivate And Gather; Above His Head Something To Study And Meditate Upon: A Few Flowers On The Earth, And All The Stars In The Sky.

There Are Many Lovely Women, But No Perfect Ones.

There Is Such A Thing As The Pressure Of Darkness.

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

Enthusiasm Is The Fever Of Reason.

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

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

Melancholy Is The Happiness Of Being Sad.

Pleasure And Happiness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Frightened Hypocrisy Hastens To Defend Itself.

Brothers, He Who Dies Here Dies In The Radiance Of The Future, And We Are Entering A Tomb All Flooded With The Dawn.

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.

Press On! A Better Fate Awaits Thee.

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

To Rove About, Musing, That Is To Say Loitering, Is, For A Philosopher, A Good Way Of Spending Time, Especially In That Kind Of Mock Rurality, Ugly But Odd, And Partaking Of Two Natures, Which Surrounds Certain Large Cities, Particularly Paris.

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.

Are You Afraid Of The Good You Might Do?

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.

Emotion Is Always New.

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

To See So Much Misery Everywhere, I Suspect That God Is Not Rich. He Keeps Up Appearances, It Is True, But I Feel The Pinch. He Gives A Revolution As A Merchant, Whose Credit Is Low, Gives A Ball.

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.

Upon The First Goblet He Read This Inscription, Monkey Wine; Upon The Second, Lion Wine; Upon The Third, Sheep Wine; Upon The Fourth, Swine Wine. These Four Inscriptions Expressed The Four Descending Degrees Of Drunkenness: The First, That Which Enlivens; The Second, That Which Irritates; The Third, That Which Stupefies; Finally The Last, That Which Brutalizes.

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

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

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.

Despotism Is A Long Crime.

A Translation In Verse . . . Seems To Me Something Absurd, Impossible.

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

Men Like Me Are Impossible Until The Day When They Become Necessary.

"i Should Hope So," Laigle Replied, "for My Coat And I Live Comfortably Together. It Has Assumed All My Wrinkles, Does Not Hurt Me Anywhere, Has Moulded Itself On My Deformities, And Is Complacent To All My Movements, And 1 Only Feel Its Presence Because It Keeps Me Warm."

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

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

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

If You Are Leaving That Sorrowful Place With Hate And Anger Against Men, You Are Worthy Of Compassion; If You Leave It With Good Will, Gentleness And Peace, You Are Better Than Any Of Us.

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 Who Suffer Because You Love, Love Still More. To Die Of Love, Is To Live By It.

...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.

It Is The Essence Of Truth That It Is Never Excessive. Why Should It Exaggerate? There Is That Which Should Be Destroyed And That Which Should Be Simply Illuminated And Studied. How Great Is The Force Of Benevolent And Searching Examination! We Must Not Resort To The Flame Where Only Light Is Required.

Exaggeration Is

If You Wish To Understand What Revolution Is, Call It Progress; And If You Wish To Understand What Progress Is, Call It Tomorrow.

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

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

Success Is A Very Hideous Thing. Its False Resemblance To Merit Deceives Men.

An Intelligent Hell Would Be Better Than A Stupid Paradise.

Emergencies Have Always Been Necessary To Progress. It Was Darkness Which Produced The Lamp. It Was Fog That Produced The Compass. It Was Hunger That Drove Us To Exploration. And It Took A Depression To Teach Us The Real Value Of A Job.

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.

In The Animal World No Creature Born To Be A Dove Turns Into A Scavenger. This Happens Only Among Men.

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.

Liberation Is Not Deliverance.

At A Certain Depth Of Distress, The Poor, In Their Stupor, Groan No Longer Over Evil, And Are No Longer Thankful For Good.

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!

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

France Is Great Because She Is France.

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

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.

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

Castles In The Air

God Made The Water But Men Made The Wine.

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

To Divinise Is Human, To Humanise Is Divine.

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

Inspiration And Genius -one And The Same.

It Was She. Whoever Has Loved Knows All The Radiant Meaning Contained In The Three Letters Of This Word ‘she.

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.

Never Had The Sky Been More Studded With Stars And More Charming, The Trees More Trembling, The Odor Of The Grass More Penetrating; Never Had The Birds Fallen Asleep Among The Leaves With A Sweeter Noise; Never Had All The Harmonies Of Universal Serenity Responded More Thoroughly To The Inward Music Of Love; Never Had Marius Been More Captivated, More Happy, More Ecstatic.

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

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

When Dictatorship Is A Fact, Revolution Becomes A Right.

The English Took The Eagle And Austrians The Eaglet. [fr., L'angleterre Prit L'aigle, Et L'autriche L'aiglon.]

When A Man Understands The Art Of Seeing, He Can Trace The Spirit Of An Age And The Features Of A King Even In The Knocker On A Door.

Those Who Do Not Weep, Do Not See.

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

...but Listen, There Will Be More Joy In Heaven Over The Tears Of A Repentant Sinner Than Over The White Robes Of A Hundred Just Men.

When The Heart Is Dry The Eye Is Dry.

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

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.

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

The World Of Sleep Has An Existence Of Its Own.

It Is Often Our Best Friends Who Throw Us Down.

Life Is A Theatre Set In Which There Are But Few Practicable Entrances.

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.

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.

A Fixed Idea Ends In Madness Or Heroism.

Dreaming Is Happiness. Waiting Is Life.

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.

The Peculiarity Of Sunrise Is To Make Us Laugh At All Our Terrors Of The Night, And Our Laugh Is Always Proportioned To The Fear We Have Had.

As A Means Of Contrast With The Sublime, The Grotesque Is, In Our View, The Richest Source That Nature Can Offer.

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

Love Is Reducing The Universe To One Being.

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.

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.

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.

The Malicious Have A Dark Happiness.

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

Nigeria Independence

The Human Soul Has Still Greater Need Of The Ideal Than Of The Real. It Is By The Real That We Exist; It Is By The Ideal That We Live.

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

A Library Implies An Act Of Faith Which Generations, Still In Darkness Hid, Sign In Their Night In Witness Of The Dawn.

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.

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

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

Algebra Applies To The Clouds.

Daring Is The Price Of Progress. All Splendid Conquests Are The Prize Of Boldness, More Or Less.

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

In The Twentieth Century War Will Be Dead, The Scaffold Will Be Dead, Hatred Will Be Dead, Frontier Boundaries Will Be Dead, Dogmas Will Be Dead; Man Will Live. He Will Possess Something Higher Than All These-a Great Country, The Whole Earth, And A Great Hope, The Whole Heaven.

Fame Must Have Enemies, As Light Must Have Gnats.

People Do Not Lack Strength; They Lack Will.

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.

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.

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

It Is The Peculiarity Of Grief To Bring Out The Childish Side Of Man.

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

Scepticism, That Dry Caries Of The Intelligence.

We Are For Religion Against The Religions.

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

Every Man Is A Book In Which God Himself Writes.

Oh! Everything I Loved!

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

For Sight Is Woman-like And Shuns The Old.

Love Is The Only Future God Offers.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Trending Author

Roberto Benigni

Category