What was more needed by this old man who divided the leisure hours of his life, where he had so little leisure, between gardening in the daytime, and contemplation at night? Was not this narrow enclos...
This first glance of a soul which does not yet know itself is like dawn in the heavens; it is the awakening of something radiant and unknown.
The terrible shock of his sentence had in some way broken that wall which separates us from the mystery of things beyond and which we call life.
The soul of the just contemplates in sleep a mysterious heaven.
The need of the immaterial is the most deeply rooted of all needs. One must have bread; but before bread, one must have the ideal.
The beautiful is just as useful as the useful.
Progress is not accomplished in one stage.
Never had the sky been more studded with stars and more charming, the trees more trembling, the odor of the grass more penetrating; never had the birds fallen asleep among the leaves with a sweeter no...
Men and deeds were brought to judgment there. They jeered at the age, which released them from the necessity of understanding it.
L'amour n'a point de moyen terme; ou il perd, ou il sauve.
I will weep with you over the children of kings, provided that you will weep with me over the children of the people
I wanted to see you again, touch you, know who you were, see if I would find you identical with the ideal image of you which had remained with me and perhaps shatter my dream with the aid of reality.
Genuflection before the idol or the dollar destroys the muscles which walk and the will that moves.
Equality, citizens, is not the whole of society on a level, a society of tall blades of grass and small oaks, or a number of entangled jealousies. It is, legally speaking, every aptitude having the sa...
Death belongs only to God. What right have men to lay hands on a thing so unknown?
Cities make ferocious men because they make corrupt men. The mountains, the sea, the forest, make savage men; they develop the fierce side, but often without destroying the humane side.
Proverty and wealth are comparative sins.
Be like the bird that passing on her flight awhile on boughs too slight feels them give way beneath her and yet sings knowing that she hath wings.
Winter changes into stone the water of heaven and the heart of man.
His ideas assumed a kind of stupefied and mechanical quality which is peculiar to despair.