Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think I missed my calling. I should have been an interior decorator.
The soul has illusions as the bird has wings: it is supported by them.
I repeat, whether we be Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns us all.
Social prosperity means man happy, the citizen free, the nation great.
Since we shall love each other, I shall be great and you shall be rich.
The quantity of civilization is measured by the quality of imagination.
What I feel for you seems less of earth and more of a cloudless heaven.
You would have imagined her at one moment a maniac, at another a queen.
True thinkers are characterized by a blending of clearness and mystery.
I'd rather be hissed at for a good verse, than applauded for a bad one.
He who is not capable of enduring poverty is not capable of being free.
It is grievous for a man to leave behind him a shadow in his own shape.
Life is a theatre set in which there are but few practicable entrances.
When a man is out of sight, it is not too long before he is out of mind.
There are no trifles in the human story, no trifling leaves on the tree.
A bit of mould is a pleiad of flowers; a nebula is an ant-hill of stars.
Genius is rare because the means of becoming one have not been available
Style is the substance of the subject called unceasingly to the surface.
Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing.
It is the end. But of what? The end of France? No. The end of kings? Yes.
The straight line, a respectable optical illusion which ruins many a man.
where would the shout of love begin, if not from the summit of sacrifice?
Word which the finger of God has written on the brow of every man — hope!
The first symptom of love in a young man is timidity; in a girl boldness.
By putting forward the hands of the clock you shall not advance the hour.
Short as life is, we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time.
It is from books that wise men derive consolation in the troubles of life.
It is God who makes woman beautiful, it is the devil who makes her pretty.
In my old age there is a coming into flower. My body wanes; my mind waxes.
Great blunders are often made, like large ropes, of a multitude of fibres.
A mother's arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them.
Sorrow is a fruit. God does not make it grow on limbs too weak to bear it.
Death belongs to God alone; by what right do men touch that unknown thing?
As for methods of prayer, all of them are good as long as they are sincere.
I would have liked to be - indeed, I should have been - a second Rembrandt.
Solitude either develops the mental power, or renders men dull and vicious.
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.
O youth! thou often tearest thy wings against the thorns of voluptuousness.
Often when we think we are knotting one thread, we are tying quite another.
And do you know Monsieur Marius? I believe I was a little in love with you.
The man is placed where the Earth ends, the woman, where the heaven starts.
To be wicked does not insure prosperity - for the inn did not succeed well.
We are all under sentence of death, but with a sort of indefinite reprieve.
Is it not when the fall is the lowest that charity ought to be the greatest?
To live a life which is a perpetual falsehood is to suffer unknown tortures.
We are given up to those gods, those monsters, those giants, — our thoughts.
The first proof of charity in a priest, and especially a bishop, is poverty.
Sacrificing the earth for paradise is giving up the substance for the shadow.
The most terrible of motives and the most unanswerable of responses: Because.
She might have melted a heart of stone, but nothing can melt a heart of wood.