Treville understood admirably well the warfare of that period, when, if you did not live at the enemy’s expense, you lived at the expense of your compatriots: his soldiers formed a legion of daredevils, undisciplined for anyone else but him.
All four once more together.
A love as tender as that of a lover for his mistress dwells, undoubtedly, in some paternal hearts toward a son.
How well I know you by your deeds and how invariably you succeed in living down to what one expects of you!
There are two medicines for all ills: time and silence.
Hatred is blind and anger deaf: the one who pours himself a cup of vengeance is likely to drink a bitter draught.
Carry your sorrow inside you as the cloud conceals ruin and death like a deadly secret that is understood only when the storm breaks.
There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.
For all evils there are two remedies – time and silence.
Woman is sacred; the woman one loves is holy.
There are two ways of seeing: with the body and with the soul. The body’s sight can sometimes forget, but the soul remembers forever.
Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes.
Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss.
Pure love and suspicion cannot dwell together: at the door where the latter enters, the former makes its exit.
Learning does not make one learned: there are those who have knowledge and those who have understanding. The first requires memory and the second philosophy.
A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself.
The difference between treason and patriotism is only a matter of dates.
One’s work may be finished someday, but one’s education never.
How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it.
Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.