To a gargoyle on the ramparts of Notre Dame as Esmeralda rides off with Gringoire Quasimodo says. "Why was I not made of stone like thee?

Those who pray always are necessary to those who never pray. In our view, the whole question is in the amount of thought that is mingled with prayer.

Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.

There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.

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

If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away.

In saying no to progress, it is not the future which they condemn, but themselves. They give themselves a melancholy disease; they inoculate themselves with the past. There is but one way of refusing tomorrow, that is to die.