The last resort of kings, the cannonball. The last resort of the people, the paving stone.
— Victor Hugo
The flesh is the surface of the unknown.
One sees qualities at a distance and defects at close range.
The learned man knows that he is ignorant.
Well, for us, in history where goodness is a rare pearl, he who was good almost takes precedence over he who was great.
Conscience is God present in man.
Virtue has a veil, vice a mask.
To contemplate is to look at shadows.
The word is the Verb, and the Verb is God.
As a means of contrast with the sublime, the grotesque is, in our view, the richest source that nature can offer.
Genius: the superhuman in man.
Blessed be Providence which has given to each his toy: the doll to the child, the child to the woman, the woman to the man, the man to the devil!
What would be ugly in a garden constitutes beauty in a mountain.
The animal is ignorant of the fact that he knows. The man is aware of the fact that he is ignorant.
To be perfectly happy it does not suffice to possess happiness, it is necessary to have deserved it.
Almost all our desires, when examined, contain something too shameful to reveal.
It is most pleasant to commit a just action which is disagreeable to someone whom one does not like.
Rhyme, that enslaved queen, that supreme charm of our poetry, that creator of our meter.
Taste is the common sense of genius.
The ox suffers, the cart complains.
Perseverance, secret of all triumphs.
Men become accustomed to poison by degrees.
Do not let it be your aim to be something, but to be someone.
Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant.
The wise man does not grow old, but ripens.
When liberty returns, I will return.
The ideal and the beautiful are identical; the ideal corresponds to the idea, and beauty to form; hence idea and substance are cognate.
Sublime upon sublime scarcely presents a contrast, and we need a little rest from everything, even the beautiful.
Despotism is a long crime.
Smallness in a great man seems smaller by its disproportion with all the rest.
By putting forward the hands of the clock you shall not advance the hour.
Men like me are impossible until the day when they become necessary.
A great artist is a great man in a great child.
Evil. Mistrust those who rejoice at it even more than those who do it.
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.
Style is the substance of the subject called unceasingly to the surface.
I am a soul. I know well that what I shall render up to the grave is not myself. That which is myself will go elsewhere. Earth, thou art not my abyss!
We see past time in a telescope and present time in a microscope. Hence the apparent enormities of the present.
Reaction - a boat which is going against the current but which does not prevent the river from flowing on.
Prayer is an august avowal of ignorance.
It is often necessary to know how to obey a woman in order sometimes to have the right to command her.
Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization.
I love all men who think, even those who think otherwise than myself.
The man who does not know other languages, unless he is a man of genius, necessarily has deficiencies in his ideas.
I put a Phrygian cap on the old dictionary.
To love is to act.
Doing nothing is happiness for children and misery for old men.
It is the end. But of what? The end of France? No. The end of kings? Yes.
No one can keep a secret better than a child.
Freedom in art, freedom in society, this is the double goal towards which all consistent and logical minds must strive.
