49 quotes
French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician (1802–1885)
“The peculiarity of sunrise is to make us laugh at all our terrors of the night, and our laugh is always proportioned to the fear we have had.”
"The guillotine is the ultimate expression of Law, and its name is vengeance; it is not neutral, nor does it allow us to remain neutral."
on Law
"Revolutions spring not from accident, but from necessity. A revolution is a return from the factitious to the real. It takes place because it must."
on Revolution
"At the approach of a certain dark hour, the light of Heaven fills those who are quitting the light of Earth."
on Death
"What makes night within us may leave stars."
on Philosophy
"This cavern is below all, and the enemy of all; it is hatred, without exception."
"The soul that loves and suffers is in the sublime state."
on Love
"He was fond of saying, "There is a bravery of the priest as well as the bravery of a colonel of dragoons,--only," he added, "ours must be tranquil."
on Courage
"France bleeds, but liberty smiles, and before the smile of liberty, France forgets her wound."
on Freedom
"The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real that we exist, it is by the ideal that we live."
"In joined hands there is still some token of hope, in the clinched fist none."
on Hope
"Love is the only future God offers."
"England has two books, the Bible and Shakespeare. England made Shakespeare,but the Bible made England."
on Literature
"Nothing is more imminent than the impossible . . . what we must always foresee is the unforeseen."
"Being good is easy, what is difficult is being just."
on Justice
"The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves—say rather, loved in spite of ourselves."
"A criminal remains a criminal whether he uses a convict's suit or a monarch's crown."
on Truth
"Perseverance, secret of all triumphs."
on Perseverance
"Hope is the Word which God has written on the brow of every man."
on Faith
"To love and be loved, that is the miracle of youth"
"Let us show that, if the people abandon the republicans, the republicans do not abandon the people."
on Politics
