What happened between those two beings? Nothing. They were adoring one another.

Every good quality runs into a defect; economy borders on avarice, the generous are not far from the prodigal, the brave man is close to the bully; he who is very pious is slightly sanctimonious; there are just as many vices to virtue as there are holes in the mantle of Diogenes.

If it were (Is it not) outrageous that society should treat with such rigid precision those of its members who were most poorly endowed in the distribution or wealth that chance had made, and who were, therefore, most worthy of indulgence.

To know, to think, to dream. That is everything.

We see past time in a telescope and present time in a microscope. Hence the apparent enormities of the present.

Monsieur' to a convict is a glass of water to a man dying of thirst at sea; ignominy thirsts for respect.

Revolutions spring not from accident, but from necessity. A revolution is a return from the factitious to the real. It takes place because it must.