Roman author Quotes

“I think, therefore I doubt.”

“Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.”

“Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings.”

“That is the explanation of war, an outrage by humanity upon humanity in despite of humanity.”

“The wise man is he who knows when and how to stop”

“If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away.”

“How frightened hypocrisy hastens to defend itself.”

“People do not lack strength; they lack will.”

“Who among us has not sought peace in a song?”

“These two beings, who had loved each other so exclusively, and with so touching a love, and who had lived so long for each other, were now suffering beside one another and through one another; without speaking of it, without harsh feeling, and smiling all the while.”

“Life is a theatre set in which there are but few practicable entrances.”

“I repeat, whether we be Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns us all.”

“M. Myriel had to undergo the fate of every newcomer in a little town, where there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think.”

“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.”