The peasants of the Asturias believe that in every litter of wolves there is one pup that is killed by the mother for fear that on growing up it would devour the other little ones.
Our mind is enriched by what we receive, our heart by what we give.
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.
Years place at last a venerable crown upon a head.
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.
To meditate is to labour; to think is to act. Folded arms work, closed hands perform, a gaze fixed on heaven is a toil.
Logic ignores the almost, just as the sun ignores the candle.
Philosophy is the microscope of thought.
Popularity – a piece of faded tinsel, that is out of date.
The most terrible of motives and the most unanswerable of responses: Because.
The soul does not give itself up to despair until it has exhausted all illusions.
There is a material advancement; we desire it. There is, also, a moral grandeur; we hold fast to it.
There is but one way of refusing To-morrow, that is to die.
Thus, during those nineteen years of torture and slavery, did this soul rise and fall at the same time. Light entered on the one side, and darkness on the other.
We are all under sentence of death, but with a sort of indefinite reprieve.
The author creates a book and the people accept or not accept it. The creator of a book is an author and the creator of it’s fate are people.
We would be ashamed of our best behavior if the people knew the motives of our behaving so.
It is an unpleasant thing to go to bed without supper, it is a still less pleasant thing not to sup and not to know where one is to sleep.
During a wise man’s whole life, his destiny holds his philosophy in a state of siege.
For dogs we kings should have lions, and for cats, tigers. The great benefits a crown.