I make little account of victory. Nothing is so stupid as to vanquish; the real glory is to convince.
The infinite has being. It is there. If infinity had no self then self would not be. But it is. Therefore it has a self. The self of infinity is God.
As for us, we respect the past here and there, and we spare it, above all, provided that it consents to be dead. If it insists on being alive, we attack it, and we try to kill it.
Liberation is not deliverance. One gets free from the galleys, but not from the sentence.
Because things are not agreeable,” said Jean Valjean, “that is no reason for being unjust towards God.
There are no bad plants or bad men. There is only bad husbandry.
To love, or to have loved, – this suffices. Demand nothing more. There is no other pearl to be found in the shadowy folds of life. To love is a fulfilment.
To be a saint is the exception; to be an upright man is the rule. Err, fall, sin if you will, but be upright.
Hours of ecstasy are never more than a moment.
There is no one for spying on people’s actions like those who are not concerned in them.
It is an error to imagine that fate can be exhausted, and that one has reached the bottom of anything whatever.
Do what we may to shape the mysterious stuff of which our lives are composed, the dark threads of our destiny will always re-emerge.
We all know the artfulness with which a dropped coin hides itself, and the job we have to find it again. There are thoughts which play the same trick on us, rolling into a buried corner of our minds; and there it is, they’ve gone forever, we can’t put our finger on them.
Do not ask the name of the person who asks you for a bed for a night. He whose name is a burden to him needs shelter more than any one.
My fellow, you strike me at present as being situated in the moon, kingdom of dream, province of illusion, capital: Soap-Bubble.
We may be indifferent to the death penalty and not declare ourselves either way so long as we have not seen a guillotine with our own eyes. But when we do, the shock is violent, and we are compelled to choose sides, for or against... Death belongs to God alone.
It’s that big guy who’s the government.
It may be remarked in passing that success is an ugly thing. Men are deceived by its false resemblances to merit. To the crowd, success wears almost the features of true mastery, and the greatest dupe of this counterfeit talent is History.
It is the habit of the envious man to absolve himself of public wrongs with his own personal grievances.
Marius saw in Bonaparte the dazzling spectre which will always rise upon the frontier, and which will guard the future. Despot but dictator; a despot resulting from a republic and summing up a revolution. Napoleon became for him the man-people as Jesus Christ is the man-God.