Telle une pierre philosophale, l'authenticité semble ainsi avoir le pouvoir de transformer en or l'assemblage de toile et de pigments que constitue un tableau.
I willingly allow that money does not guarantee happiness; but it must also be allowed that it makes happiness a great deal easier to achieve.
Yet, whether to the glory or to the shame of human nature, in what we call pleasure (with an excess of scorn, perhaps) there are abysses as deep as those of love.
It was there, in particular, that I confirmed the truth that love, which we cry up as the source of our pleasures, is nothing more than an excuse for them.
Truth to tell, the longer I live, the more I'm tempted to think that the only moderately worthwhile people in the world are you and I.
Muéstrale a un hombre demasiados huesos de camello, o muéstraselos a menudo, y no podrá reconocer un camello vivo cuando se le cruce por delante. (Mirza Ahsan of Tabriz)
I said, 'If other beings besides us exist on Earth, why didn't we meet them a long time ago?
Não é o homem ou a mulher que devem ser ideais, o que devem, sim, é querer partilhar a vida. Uma grande história de amor é o encontro de dois dadores.
There comes an hour when protest no longer suffices; after philosophy there must be action; the strong hand finishes what the idea has sketched.
Flesh is willing, but the Soul requires Sisyphean patience for its song, Time, Hippocrates remarked, is short and Art is long.
If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness. (Monseigneur Bienvenu in _Les Miserables_)
The terrible shock of his sentence had in some way broken that wall which separates us from the mystery of things beyond and which we call life.
As for us, we respect the past here and there, and we spare it, above all, provided that it consents to be dead. If it insists on being alive, we attack it, and we try to kill it.
The judge speaks in the name of justice,' he said. 'The priest speaks in the name of pity, which is only a higher form of justice.' (Bishop Myriel)
Great griefs exhaust. They discourage us with life. The man into whom they enter feels something taken from him. In youth, their visit is sad; later on, it is ominous.
Do not inquire he name if him who asks a shelter of you. The very man who's embarrassed by his name is the one who needs shelter
A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in--what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.
He had to accept the fate of every newcomer to a small town where there are plenty of tongues that gossip and few minds that think.
The peculiarity of sunrise is to make us laugh at all our terrors of the night, and our laugh is always proportioned to the fear we have had.
Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over, this is recognised: that the human race has been harshly treated, but that it has advanced.
[He] had to submit to the fate of every newcomer in a small town, where many tongues talk but few heads think.
