Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings.

Often the losing of a battle leads to the winning of progress. Less glory but greater liberty: the drum is silent and the voices of reason can be heard.

France lost a great novel last night.

Dirt has been shrewdly termed "misplaced material.

Marius and Cosette did not ask where this would lead them. They looked at themselves as arrived. It is a strange pretension for men to ask that love should lead them somewhere.

So your desire is to do nothing? Well, you shall not have a week, a day, an hour, free from oppression. You shall not be able to lift anything without agony. Every passing minute will make your muscles crack. What is feather to others will be a rock to you. The simplest things will become difficult. Life will become monstrous about you. To come, to go, to breathe, will be so many terrible tasks for you. Your lungs will feel like a hundred-pound weight.

There are fathers who do not love their children; there is no grandfather who does not adore his grandson.