Humanity is identity. All men are made of the same clay. There is no difference, here below, at least, in predestination. The same shadow in front, the same flesh in the present, the same ashes afterw...
He who contemplates the depths of Paris is seized with vertigo.
He was one of those children most deserving of pity, among all, one of those who have father and mother, and who are orphans nevertheless.
He understood how to say the grandest things in the most vulgar of idioms. As he spoke all tongues, he entered into all hearts.
He had not lived long enough to have discovered that nothing is more close at hand than the impossible, and what must be looked for is the unforeseen.
He had enlightened Marius by chance and without being aware of the fact, as does a candle which some one brings; he had been the candle and not the some one.
He believed that faith gives health. He sought to counsel and calm the despairing by pointing out the Man of Resignation, and to transform the grief that contemplates the grave by showing it the grief...
He always took his meals alone, with an open book before him, which he read. He had a well-selected little library. He loved books; books are cold but safe friends. In
God's whole policy consists in rendering slopes less steep.
God delivers over to men his visible will in events, an obscure text written in a mysterious tongue. Men immediately make translations of it; translations hasty, incorrect, full of errors, of gaps, an...
God can add nothing to the happiness of those who love, except to give them endless duration.
Go on philosophers--teach, enlighten, kindle, think aloud, speak up, run joyfully toward broad daylight, fraternize in the public squares, announce the glad tidings, lavish your alphabets, proclaim hu...
Gans and Savigny controversy; he took Savigny, he took Gans, read
Dost thou understand? I love thee! he cried again. What love! said the unhappy girl with a shudder. He resumed,--The love of a damned soul.
Desiring always to be in mourning, he clothed himself with night.
Des marchands de sang humain criaient a tue-tête : Qui veut des places ?. Une rage m'a pris contre ce peuple. J'ai eu envie de leur crier : Qui veut la mienne ?
Death belongs to God alone. By what right do men touch that unknown thing?
Communism and agrarian law think that they solve the second problem. They are mistaken. Their division kills production. Equal partition abolishes emulation; and consequently labor. It is a partition...
Civil war—what does that mean? Is there a foreign war? Is not all war between men, war between brothers? War is qualified only by its object. There is no such thing as foreign or civil war; there is o...
Citizens, the nineteenth century is great, but the twentieth century will be happy. Then, there will be nothing more like the history of old,we shall no longer, as to-day, have to fear a conquest, an...