Aures habet, et non audiet.
What am I to do on this earth? The choice rests with me: suffer or enjoy. Whither will suffering lead me? To nothingness; but I shall have suffered. Whither will enjoyment lead me? To nothingness; but I will have enjoyed myself.
Let us never fear robbers nor murderers. Those are dangers from without, petty dangers. Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices are the real murderers. The great dangers lie within ourselves.
Ever since history has been written, ever since philosophy has meditated, misery has been the garment of the human race.
Thought is the labour of the intellect, reverie is its pleasure. To replace thought by reverie is to confound poison with nourishment.
Each of our passions, even love, has a stomach that must not be overloaded. We must in all things write the word finis in time; we must restrain ourselves, when it becomes urgent, draw the bolt on the appetite, play a fantasia on the violin, then break the strings with our own hand.
Hay una manera de huir que parece buscar.
Die Wissenschaft muss mit glatten Wangen begonnen werden und nicht erst mit runzeligen, wenn man in ihr etwas erreichen will.
It seemed as though he had for a soul the book of the natural law.
But that which pleases us in people who are rising pleases us less in the case of people who are falling.
Despots play their part in the works of thinkers. The writer doubles and trebles the power of writing when a ruler imposes silence on the people.
The utmost extremity of degradation is the obscene merriment to which it gives rise.
The peculiarity of prudery is to station the more sentries the less the fortress is menaced.
The soul of a young girl should not be left in the dark; later on, mirages that are too abrupt and too lively are formed there, as in a dark chamber.
To-morrow fulfils its work irresistibly, and it is already fulfilling it to-day.
Madame Thenardier was approaching her forties, which is equivalent to fifty in a woman...
So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding the element.
Among all these passionate hearts and all these undoubting minds there was one skeptic. How did he happen to be there? From juxtaposition. The name of this skeptic was Grantaire, and he usually signed with this rebus: R. Grantaire was a man who took good care not to believe in anything.
Smoking blood, over-filled cemeteries, mothers in tears, – these are formidable pleaders. When the earth is suffering from too heavy a burden, there are mysterious groanings of the shades, to which the abyss lends an ear.
Every one has noticed the taste which cats have for pausing and lounging between the two leaves of a half-shut door. Who is there who has not said to a cat, “Do come in!