My misfortune is that I still resemble a man too much. I should liked to be wholly a beast like that goat. - Quasimodo

Nature has made a pebble and a female. The lapidary makes the diamond, and the lover makes the woman.

Homer is one of the men of genius who solve that fine problem of art - the finest of all, perhaps - truly to depict humanity by the enlargement of man: that is, to generate the real in the ideal.

One can resist the invasion of an army but one cannot resist the invasion of ideas.

Nothing is more imminent than the impossible . . . what we must always foresee is the unforeseen.

Superstitions, bigotries, hypocrisies, prejudices, these phantoms, phantoms though they be, cling to life; they have teeth and nails in their shadowy substance, and we must grapple with them individually and make war on them without truce; for it is one of humanity's inevitabilities to be condemned to eternal struggle with phantoms.

And if it happened to be a Christmas-night when the great bell seemed to rattle in its throat as it called the faithful to the midnight mass, there was such an indescribable air of life spread over the sombre facade that the great door-way looked as if it were swallowing the entire crowd, and the rose-window staring at them.