To have lied is to have suffered.
To crush fanaticism and to venerate the infinite, such is the law. Let us not confine ourselves to prostrating ourselves before the tree of creation, and to the contemplation of its branches full of s...
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...
To be a saint is to be an exception; to be a true man is the rule. Err, fail, sin if you must, but be upright. To sin as little as possible is the law for men; to sin not at all is a dream for angels....
To a gargoyle on the ramparts of Notre Dame as Esmeralda rides off with Gringoire Quasimodo says. Why was I not made of stone like thee?
Thus those two beings, so exclusively and touchingly devoted, who had lived so long for each other alone, came to suffer side by side, each through the other, without ever speaking of the matter, with...
Thus it is. And we sacrifice ourselves for these visions, which are almost always illusions for the sacrificed, but illusions with which, after all, the whole of human certainty is mingled. We throw o...
This is what floats up confusedly, pell-mell, for the year 1817, and is now forgotten. History neglects nearly all these particulars, and cannot do otherwise; the infinity would overwhelm it. Neverthe...
This first glance of a soul which does not yet know itself is like the dawn in the sky. It is the awakening of something radiant and unknown. Nothing can express the dangerous chasm of this unlooked-f...
They shall exist, and so long as society shall be what it is, they will be what they are. Under the dark vault of their cave, they are forever reproduced in the ooze. What is required to exorcise thes...
They pray.To whom?To God.To pray to God, - what is the meaning of these words?Is there an infinite beyond us? Is that infinite there, inherent, permanent; necessarily substantial, since it is infinite...
They appeared very corrupt and very depraved, no doubt, very vile, very odious even; but those who fall without becoming degraded are rare; besides, there is a point where the unfortunate and the infa...
They adored each other; but still the permanent and the immutable subsist. We may love and laugh, pout, clasp hands, smile, and exchange endearments, but that does not affect eternity. Two lovers hide...
These are dark radiances. They have no suspicion that they are to be pitied. Certainly they are so. He who does not weep does not see. They are to be admired and pitied, as one would both pity and adm...
Therefore, said the Bishop, I intend to go without escort. You do not really mean that, Monseigneur! exclaimed the mayor. I do mean it so thoroughly that I absolutely refuse any gendarmes, and shall s...
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, we are aware, a philosophy that denies the infinite. There is also a philosophy, classified as pathologic, that denies the sun; this philosophy is called blindness. To set up a theory that l...
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 is one thing sadder than to see one's children die; it is to see them leading an evil life.