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.
This will destroy that. The book will kill the edifice.
He had never known a “kind woman friend” in his native parts. He had not had the time to fall in love.
God gives air to men; the law sells it to them.
By continually going out for reverie, a day comes when you go out to drown yourself.
L’ignorance vaut encore mieux que la mauvaise science.
Do we ever realize our fondest dreams?
He visited the poor so long as he had any money; when he no longer had any, he visited the rich.
Madame Magloire,” retorted the Bishop, “you are mistaken. The beautiful is as useful as the useful.” He added after a pause, “More so, perhaps.
I see a dark light.
Good! And what if you should happen to cough or to sneeze?” “A man who is making his escape does not cough or sneeze.
People who are overwhelmed with troubles never do look back. They know only too well that misfortune follows in their footsteps.
Thoughtful minds make little use of this expression: the happy and the unhappy. In this world, clearly a vestibule of another, no one is happy.
Did not i say that things would come right of themselves? said the Bishop. Then he added, with a smile, To him who contents himself with the surplice of a curate, God sends the cope of an archbishop. Monseigneur, murmured the cure, throwing back his head with a smile. God or the Devil.