What dangers you run, O noble souls! Often, you give your heart, but we take only your body. Your heart is left to you and you look at it in the shadows and shudder.
We live in a sad society. Succeed--that is the advice which falls drop by drop from the overhanging corruption. In passing, we might say that success is a hideous thing. Its false similarity to merit...
Was there a voice that whispered in his ear that he had just passed the most solemn moment of his destiny, that there was no longer a middle course for him; that from now on, he would either be the be...
Un incendie peut faire une aurore sans doute, mais pourquoi ne pas attendre le lever du jour ? Un volcan éclaire, mais l’aube éclaire encore mieux. Combeferre préférait peut-être la blancheur du beau...
True or false, what is said about people often has as much bearing on their lives and especially on their destinies as what they do.
To speak out aloud when alone is as it were to have a dialogue with the divinity which is within.
To realize one's dream. To whom is this accorded? There must be elections for this in heaven; we are all candidates, unknown to ourselves; the angels vote.
To love or have loved is all-sufficing. We must not ask for more. No other pearl is to be found in the shadowfolds of life. To love is an accomplishment.
To know how to distinguish the agitation arising from covetousness, from the agitation arising from principles, to fight the one and aid the other, in this lies the genius and the power of great revol...
To blame or praise men on account of the result, is almost like praising or blaming figures on account of the sum total. Whatever is to happen, happens; whatever is to blow, blows. The eternal serenit...
Throughout the month of May, every night, in that poor, wild garden, under that shrubbery, each day, more perfumed and dense, two human beings composed of every chastity and every innocence, every flo...
Thou art free!
This cavern is below all, and the enemy of all; it is hatred, without exception.
There must be a glowing light above such houses. The joy they contain must escape in light through the stones of the walls and shine dimly into the darkness. It is impossible that this sacred festival...
There is will in the thought, there is none in the dream. The dream, which is completely spontaneous, takes and keeps, even in the gigantic and the ideal, the form of our mind. Nothing springs more di...
There is still a certain grace in a dead festival. It has been happy. Upon those chairs in disarray, among those flowers which are withering, under those extinguished lights, there have been thoughts...
There are plenty who regard a wall behind which something is happening as a very curious thing.
The wretchedness of a child interests a mother, the wretchedness of a young man interests a young girl, the wretchedness of an old man interests no one. It is, of all distresses, the coldest.
The supreme happiness of life is that we are loved; loved for ourselves - say rather, loved in spite of ourselves
The slightest contact with logic makes all false arguments disintegrate.