Roman author Quotes

“Idleness, pleasure, what abysses! To do nothing is a dreary course to take, be sure of it. To live idle upon the substance of society! To be useless, that is to say, noxious! This leads straight to the lowest depth of misery.”

“Perseverance, secret of all triumphs.”

“His universal compassion was due less to natural instinct, than to a profound conviction, a sum of thoughts that in the course of living had filtered through to his heart: for in the nature of man, as in rock, there may be channels hollowed by the dropping of water, and these can never be destroyed.”

“No one ever keeps a secret so well as a child.”

“Every day has its great grief or its small anxiety. ... One cloud is dispelled, another forms. There is hardly one day in a hundred of real joy and bright sunshine.”

“Everybody has noticed the way cats stop and loiter in a half-open door. Hasn't everyone said to a cat: For heavens sake why don't you come in? With opportunity half-open in front of them, there are men who have a similar tendency to remain undecided between two solutions, at the risk of being crushed by fate abruptly closing the opportunity. The overprudent, cats as they are, and because they are cats, sometimes run more danger than the bold”

“These are true felicities. No joy beyond these joys. Love is the only ecstasy, everything else weeps”

“Concision in style, precision in thought, decision in life.”

“Everything bows to success, even grammar.”

“Where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and which has the wider vision?”

“...Human thought has no limit. At its risk and peril, it analyzes and dissects its own fascination. We could almost say that, by a sort of splendid reaction, it fascinates nature; the mysterious world surrounding us returns what it receives; it is likely that contemplators are contemplated.”

“It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.”

“. . .where there is no more hope, song remains.”

“Civil war.... What did the words mean? Was there any such thing as "foreign war"? Was not all warfare between men warfare between brothers?”

“To love is to act.”

“Progress is not accomplished in one stage.”

“Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved.”

“Short as life is, we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time.”

“Do you hear the people sing? Singing a song of angry men”

“A woman's best qualities are harmful if undiluted with prudence.”

“I love all men who think, even those who think otherwise than myself.”

“I'd rather be hissed at for a good verse, than applauded for a bad one.”

“Whenever a man's friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old.”

“Go out in the world and work like money doesn't matter, sing as if no one is listening, love as if you have never been hurt, and dance as if no one is watching.”

“Nothing can be sadder or more profound than to see a thousand things for the first and last time.”