This book should be read as one would read the book of a dead man.

It is a terrible thing to be happy! How pleased we are with it! How all-sufficient we think it! How, being in possession of the false aim of life, happiness, we forget the true aim, duty!

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

Symmetry is tedious, and tedium is the very basis of mourning. Despair yawns.

Table talk and Lovers' talk equally elude the grasp; Lovers' talk is clouds, table talk is smoke.

Is there not in every human soul a primitive spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this world and immortal in the next, which can be developed by goodness, kindled, lit up, and made to radiate, and which evil can never entirely extinguish.

One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas.