Reality in strong doses frightens.
At the moment when her eyes closed, when all feeling vanished in her, she thought that she felt a touch of fire imprinted on her lips, a kiss more burning than the red-hot iron of the executioner.
A breath of Paris preserves the soul.
Success is a very hideous thing. Its false resemblance to merit deceives men.
The hatred of luxury is not an intelligent hatred. It implies a hatred of arts.
To lie a little is not possible: he who lies, lies the whole lie.
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.
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.
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.
God knows better than we do what we need.
His whole life was now summed up in two words: absolute uncertainty within an impenetrable fog.
Every blade has two edges; he who wounds with one wounds himself with the other.
What is fright by night is curiosity by day.
Love is a fault; so be it.
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.
Loving is almost a substitute for thinking. Love is a burning forgetfulness of all other things. How shall we ask passion to be logical?
Are you afraid of the good you might do?
So long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Miserables cannot fail to be of use.
Now, one cannot read nonsense with impunity.
Promise to give me a kiss on my brow when I am dead. – I shall feel it.