A creditor is worse than a slave-owner; for the master owns only your person, but a creditor owns your dignity, and can command it.

Every blade has two edges; he who wounds with one wounds himself with the other.

Whenever a man's friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old.

A strange thing has happened, do you know? I am in darkness. There is a person who, departing, took away the sun.

Thus, during those nineteen years of torture and slavery, did this soul rise and fall at the same time. Light entered on the one side, and darkness on the other.

Upon the first goblet he read this inscription, monkey wine; upon the second, lion wine; upon the third, sheep wine; upon the fourth, swine wine. These four inscriptions expressed the four descending degrees of drunkenness: the first, that which enlivens; the second, that which irritates; the third, that which stupefies; finally the last, that which brutalizes.

If he had had all Peru in his pocket, he would certainly have given it to this dancer; but Gringoire had not Peru in his pocket; and besides, America was not yet discovered. (p. 66)