On Love:
Life is the flower for which love is the honey.
Love is a portion of the soul itself, and it is of the same nature as the celestial breathing of the atmosphere of paradise.
The most powerful symptom of love is a tenderness which becomes at times almost insupportable.
To love is to act.
Love has no middle term; either it destroys, or it saves. All human destiny is this dilemma. This dilemma, destruction or salvation, no fate proposes more inexorably than love. Love is life, if it is not death. Cradle; coffin, too. The same sentiment says yes and no in the human heart. Of all the things God has made, the human heart is the one that sheds most light, and alas! most night.
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Love is the foolishness of men, and the wisdom of God.
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Loving is almost a substitute for thinking. Love is a burning forgetfulness of all other things. How shall we ask passion to be logical?
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Marius and Cosette did not ask where this would lead them. They looked at themselves as arrived. It is a strange pretension for men to ask that love should lead them somewhere.
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The soul falls into contemplation before this sanctuary, where the celebration of love is held.
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To die for lack of love is horrible. The asphyxia of the soul.
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To love or have loved is all-sufficing. We must not ask for more. No other pearl is to be found in the shadowfolds of life. To love is an accomplishment.
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When love has fused and mingled two beings in a sacred and angelic unity, the secret of life has been discovered so far as they are concerned; they are no longer anything more than the two boundaries of the same destiny; they are no longer anything but the two wings of the same spirit. Love, soar.
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Love is like a tree: it grows by itself, roots itself deeply in our being and continues to flourish over a heart in ruin. The inexplicable fact is that the blinder it is, the more tenacious it is. It is never stronger than when it is completely unreasonable.
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Love is like a tree: it shoots of itself; it strikes it’s roots deeply into our whole being, and frequently continues to put forth green leaves over a heart in ruins. And there is this unaccountable circumstance attending it, that the blinder the passion the more tenacious it is. Never is it stronger than when it is most unreasonable.
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On Life:
Life is the flower for which love is the honey.
Short as life is, we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time.
The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather in spite of ourselves.
I had a dream my life would be different from this hell I am living, so different from what it seemed. Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.
The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved.
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.
In vain we chisel, as best we can, the mysterious block of which our life is made, the black vein of destiny reappears continually.
Life is a voyage.
Let us admit, without bitterness, that the individual has his distinct interests and can, without felony, stipulate for those interests and defend them. The present has its pardonable amount of egotism; momentary life has its claims, and cannot be expected to sacrifice itself incessantly to the future. The generation which is in its turn passing over the earth is not forced to abridge its life for the sake of the generations, its equals after all, whose turn shall come later on.
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Life is a theatre set in which there are but few practicable entrances.
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So your desire is to do nothing? Well, you shall not have a week, a day, an hour, free from oppression. You shall not be able to lift anything without agony. Every passing minute will make your muscles crack. What is feather to others will be a rock to you. The simplest things will become difficult. Life will become monstrous about you. To come, to go, to breathe, will be so many terrible tasks for you. Your lungs will feel like a hundred-pound weight.
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When love has fused and mingled two beings in a sacred and angelic unity, the secret of life has been discovered so far as they are concerned; they are no longer anything more than the two boundaries of the same destiny; they are no longer anything but the two wings of the same spirit. Love, soar.
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On Death:
Woe, alas, to those who have loved only bodies, forms, appearances! Death will rob them of everything. Try to love souls, you will find them again.
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On Happiness:
Life’s greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved.
Life’s great happiness is to be convinced we are loved.
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On Success:
Success is a very hideous thing. Its false resemblance to merit deceives men.
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Success is an ugly thing. Men are deceived by its false resemblances to merit…. They confound the brilliance of the firmament with the star-shaped footprints of a duck in the mud.
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On God:
Hope is the word which God has written on the brow of every man.
Sorrow is a fruit. God does not make it grow on limbs too weak to bear it.
Love has no middle term; either it destroys, or it saves. All human destiny is this dilemma. This dilemma, destruction or salvation, no fate proposes more inexorably than love. Love is life, if it is not death. Cradle; coffin, too. The same sentiment says yes and no in the human heart. Of all the things God has made, the human heart is the one that sheds most light, and alas! most night.
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