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.
— Victor Hugo
Indigestion is charged by God with enforcing morality on the stomach.
Toleration is the best religion.
Wisdom is a sacred communion.
To love beauty is to see light.
Fashions have done more harm than revolutions.
A faith is a necessity to a man. Woe to him who believes in nothing.
Nothing else in the world... not all the armies... is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.
Be like the bird who, pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing she hath wings.
Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause.
Liberation is not deliverance.
A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.
How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said.
Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.
Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age.
Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.
The mountains, the forest, and the sea, render men savage; they develop the fierce, but yet do not destroy the human.
There are thoughts which are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the posture of the body, the soul is on its knees.
To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.
Try as you will, you cannot annihilate that eternal relic of the human heart, love.
I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses.
Everything being a constant carnival, there is no carnival left.
One can resist the invasion of an army but one cannot resist the invasion of ideas.
An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise.
There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time as come.
Hell is an outrage on humanity. When you tell me that your deity made you in his image, I reply that he must have been very ugly.
But when ill indeed, Even dismissing the doctor don't always succeed.
Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace.
Hope is the word which God has written on the brow of every man.
He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.
Joy's smile is much closer to tears than laughter.
All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.
As the purse is emptied, the heart is filled.
To think of shadows is a serious thing.
Habit is the nursery of errors.
Architecture has recorded the great ideas of the human race. Not only every religious symbol, but every human thought has its page in that vast book.
There is nothing like a dream to create the future.
The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
When a man is out of sight, it is not too long before he is out of mind.
There are fathers who do not love their children; there is no grandfather who does not adore his grandson.
When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right.
Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.
Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.
When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age.
What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past.