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.

Years place at last a venerable crown upon a head.

God created the flirt as soon as he made the fool.

Ideas can no more flow backward than can a river.

And do you know Monsieur Marius? I believe I was a little in love with you.

To gaze into the depths of the sea is, in the imagination, like beholding the vast unknown, and from its most terrible point of view. The submarine gulf is analogous to the realm of night and dreams. There also is sleep, unconsciousness, or at least apparent unconsciousness, of creation. There in the awful silence and darkness, the rude first forms of life, phantomlike, demoniacal, pursue their horrible instincts.

A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.