There are souls which, crab-like, crawl continually toward darkness, going back in life rather than advancing in it, using what experience they have to increase their deformity, growing worse without ceasing, and becoming steeped more and more thoroughly in an intensifying wickedness.

Is it not when the fall is the lowest that charity ought to be the greatest?

Despotism is a long crime.

You would have imagined her at one moment a maniac, at another a queen.

So a voice in the mountain is enough to let loose an avalanche. A word too much may be followed by a caving in. If the word had not been spoken, it would not have happened.

The merciful precepts of Christ will at last suffuse the Code and it will glow with their radiance. Crime will be considered an illness with its own doctors to replace your judges and its hospitals to replace your prisons. Liberty shall be equated with health. Ointments and oil shall be applied to limbs that were once shackled and branded. Infirmities that once were scourged with anger shall now be bathed with love. The cross in place of the gallows: sublime and yet so simple.

Reason is intelligence taking exercise. Imagination is intelligence with an erection.