French author Quotes

“It is most pleasant to commit a just action which is disagreeable to someone whom one does not like.”

“A creditor is worse than a slave-owner; for the master owns only your person, but a creditor owns your dignity, and can command it.”

“The wise man does not grow old, but ripens.”

“Initiative is doing the right thing without being told.”

“Nothing else in the world... not all the armies... is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.”

“The repose of darkness is deeper on the water than on the land.”

“Freedom in art, freedom in society, this is the double goal towards which all consistent and logical minds must strive.”

“Habit is the nursery of errors.”

“A criminal remains a criminal whether he uses a convict's suit or a monarch's crown.”

“Slowly he took out the clothes in which, ten years beforem Cosette had left Montfermeil; first the little dress, then the black scarf, then the great heavy child's shoes Cosette could still almost have worn, so small was her foot, then the vest of very thich fustian, then the knitted petticoat, the the apron with pockets, then the wool stockings.... Then his venerable white head fell on the bed, this old stoical heart broke, his face was swallowed up, so to speak, in Cosette's clothes, and anybody who had passed along the staircase at that moment would have heard irrepressible sobbing.”

“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?”

“There have been in this century only one great man and one great thing: Napoleon and liberty. For want of the great man, let us have the great thing.”

“Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices are the real murderers. The great dangers lie within ourselves.”

“When liberty returns, I will return.”

“As with stomachs, we should pity minds that do not eat.”

“Let us leave to the brain what belongs to it, and agree that the work of the men of genius is of the superhuman, the offspring of man.”

“People generally will soon understand that writers should be judged, not according to rules and species, which are contrary to nature and art, but according to the immutable principles of the art of composition, and the special laws of their individual temperaments.”

“Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.”

“Nothing is more dangerous than discontinued labor; it is habit lost. A habit easy to abandon, difficult to resume.”

“You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

“In saying no to progress, it is not the future which they condemn, but themselves. They give themselves a melancholy disease; they inoculate themselves with the past. There is but one way of refusing tomorrow, that is to die.”

“Love is reducing the universe to one being.”

“To love beauty is to see light.”

“Taste is the common sense of genius.”

“"I should hope so," Laigle replied, "for my coat and I live comfortably together. It has assumed all my wrinkles, does not hurt me anywhere, has moulded itself on my deformities, and is complacent to all my movements, and 1 only feel its presence because it keeps me warm."”