Victor Hugo

It is the fate of many men to live thus half submerged.

It is not enough to be happy, one must be content.

Books are cold but safe friends.

Every one has noticed the taste which cats have for pausing and lounging between the two leaves of a half-shut door. Who is there who has not said to a cat, “Do come in!” There are men who, when an incident stands half-open before them, have the same tendency to halt in indecision between two resolutions, at the risk of getting crushed through the abrupt closing of the adventure by fate. The over-prudent, cats as they are, and because they are cats, sometimes incur more danger than the audacious.

The most ingenious is, at times, the wisest.

They are majestic because they think.

Anger may be both foolish and absurd; one can be irritated wrongfully; one is exasperated only when there is some show of right on one’s side at bottom.

People arrange such departures tranquilly; but they are despairs!

All of us, whoever we may be, have our respirable beings.

Woe, alas! to him who shall have loved only bodies, forms, appearances! Death will deprive him of all. Try to love souls, you will find them again.