To be perfectly happy it does not suffice to possess happiness, it is necessary to have deserved it.
He who contemplates the depths of Paris is seized with vertigo. Nothing is more fantastic. Nothing is more tragic. Nothing is more sublime.
The greatest products of architecture are less the works of individuals than of society; rather the offspring of a nation’s effort, than the inspired flash of a man of genius...
He had, they said, tasted in succession all the apples of the tree of knowledge, and, whether from hunger or disgust, had ended by tasting the forbidden fruit.
My misfortune is that I still resemble a man too much. I should liked to be wholly a beast like that goat. – Quasimodo.
There are plenty who regard a wall behind which something is happening as a very curious thing.
To have lied is to have suffered.
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.