"Men become accustomed to poison by degrees...." - Quote by Victor Hugo

“Love is reducing the universe to one being.”

“A fixed idea ends in madness or heroism.”

“The little people must be sacred to the big ones, and it is from the rights of the weak that the duty of the strong is comprised.”

“We all wish to be of importance in one way or another. The child coughs with might and main, since it has no other claim on the company.”

“It is very doubtful whether man is enough of a political animal to produce a good, sensible, serious and efficient constitution. All the evidence is against it.”

“Man is the highest being in creation, because he attains to freedom.”

“My nature is subdued to what it works in, like the dyer's hand.”

“A man accustomed to American food and American domestic cookery would not starve to death suddenly in Europe, but I think he would gradually waste away, and eventually die.”

“At that time, I often thought that if I had had to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but look up at the sky flowing overhead, little by little I would have gotten used to it.”