There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.

A sewer is a cynic. It tells All.

Philosophy is the microscope of thought. Everything desires to flee from it, but nothing escapes it.

In short, I am doing what I can, I suffer with the same universal suffering, and I try to assuage it, I possess only the puny forces of a man, and I cry to all: “Help me!

He loved books; books are cold but safe friends.

He who contemplates the depths of Paris is seized with vertigo. Nothing is more fantastic. Nothing is more tragic. Nothing is more sublime.

People do not read stupidities with impunity.