Love is the only ecstasy, everything else weeps.
Though poor, he had succeeded in gathering together, through patience, self-denial, and time, a valuable collection of rare volumes of every genre. He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two.
Love is life, if it is not death.
The senator... was a smart man who had made his way in life with a single-mindedness oblivious to any of those stumbling blocks known as conscience, sworn oaths, justice, duty...
To wipe out abuse is not enough; you have to change people’s whole outlook. The mill is no longer standing, but the wind’s still there, blowing away.
His brain was in one of those states that are both violent and yet frighteningly calm, in which thought runs so deep it blots out reality. You no longer see the objects around you, yet you can see the shapes in your mind as thought they are outside your body.
A clock does not stop at the very moment you lose the key.
She read aloud, as she understood better that way. In reading aloud you assume authority for what you are reading. There are people who read very loudly, and who appear to be giving their word of honor for what they are reading.
Once his decision had been taken, he waited for the right opportunity. It was not long coming. Old.
The best minds have their soft spots and sometimes feel somewhat bruised by the scant respect of logic.
Poor children cannot enter the public gardens; still, one would think that, as children, they had a right to the flowers.
In the first place, the rule; as for the code, we shall see. Make as many laws as you please, men; but keep them for yourselves. The tribute to Caesar is never anything but the remnants of the tribute to God. A prince is nothing in the presence of a principle.
Sunshine helps to make man patient.
Style is the shape the ideal takes, rhythm, its movement.
Wine, for serious drunks, enjoys only a limited success. There is, concerning inebriation, black magic and white magic; wine is only white magic.
You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving. The great acts of love are done by those who are habitually performing small acts of kindness. We pardon to the extent that we love. Love is knowing that even when you are alone, you will never be lonely again, and great happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved. Loved for ourselves, and even loved in spite of ourselves.
The nourishment of the people is a good object; to massacre them is a bad means.
This took place in the depths of a forest, at night, in winter, far from all human sight; she was a child of eight: no one but God saw that sad thing at the moment. And her mother, no doubt, alas! For there are things that make the dead open their eyes in their graves.
Having an immense reserve fund of wrath to get rid of, and not knowing what to do with it, he continued to address his daughter as you instead of thou for the next three months.
Police chiefs don’t think a cat can possibly turn into a lion; and yet, it happens.