The saints were his friends, and blessed him; the monsters were his friends, and guarded him.

In the relations of man with the animals, with the flowers, with all the objects of creation, there is a whole great ethic, scarcely perceived as yet, which will at length break through into the light, and which will be the corollary and the complement to human ethics.

Wisdom is the health of the soul.

If you would civilize a man, begin with his grandmother.

There is no such thing as a little country. The greatness of a people is no more determined by their numbers than the greatness of a man is by his height.

We may remark in passing that to be blind and beloved may, in this world where nothing is perfect, be among the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness. The supreme happiness in life is the assurance of being loved; of being loved for oneself, even in spite of oneself; and this assurance the blind man possesses. In his affliction, to be served is to be caressed. Does he lack anything? no. Possessing love he is not deprived of light. A love, moreover, that is wholly pure. There can be no blindness where there is this certainty.

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