War can only be qualified by its object, and there is neither foreign war nor civil war, there is only just or unjust war.

No man is more unhappy than the one who is never in adversity; the greatest affliction of life is never to be afflicted.

While contemplating the bride, and eyeing the cake of soap, he muttered between his teeth: 'Tuesday. It was not Tuesday. Was it Tuesday? Perhaps it was Tuesday. Yes, it was Tuesday.' No one has ever discovered to what this monologue referred. Yes, perchance, this monologue had some connection with the last occasion on which he had dined, three days before, for it was now Friday.

As for the bishop, the sight of the guillotine was a great shock to him, from which he recovered only slowly.

Paris is a sum total. Paris is the ceiling of the human race. All this prodigious city is an epitome of dead and living manners and customs. He who sees Paris, seems to see all history through with the sky and constellations in the intervals.

He sought...to transform the grief which looks down into the grave by showing it the grief which looks up to the stars.

Heaven, on occasion, half opens its arms to us; and that is the great moment.