The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

by Victor Hugo

Which demonstrates a new truth: that great events have incalculable results.

It is the accursed inventions of this century that are ruining everything,—artilleries, bombards, and, above all, printing, that other German pest. No more manuscripts, no more books! printing will kill bookselling. It is the end of the world that is drawing nigh.”

the best means of making the public wait patiently is to assure them that one is about to begin instantly.

Tempus edax, homo edacior18; which I should be glad to translate thus: time is blind, man is stupid.

Yet it was these very bells which had made him deaf; but mothers often love best that child which has caused them the most suffering.

Egypt would have taken him for the god of this temple; the Middle Ages believed him to be its demon: he was in fact its soul.

Hence, he became more and more learned, and, at the same time, as a natural consequence, more and more rigid as a priest, more and more sad as a man. There are for each of us several parallelisms between our intelligence, our habits, and our character, which develop without a break, and break only in the great disturbances of life.

Love is like a tree; it sprouts forth of itself, sends its roots out deeply through our whole being, and often continues to flourish greenly over a heart in ruins. And the inexplicable point about it is that the more blind is this passion, the more tenacious it is. It is never more solid than when it has no reason in it.