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Assuredly, it would be injustice and bad taste to hoot a cardinal for having come late to the spectacle, when he is a handsome man, and when he wears his scarlet robe well.
I have been waiting for the first blow this quarter of an hour; nothing comes; they are cowards who only scratch each other with insults.
“A one-eyed man is far less complete than a blind man. He knows what he lacks.”
(for Gringoire, like a true dramatic poet, was subject to monologues)
It was the first enjoyment of self-love that he had ever experienced. Down to that day, he had known only humiliation, disdain for his condition, disgust for his person. Hence, deaf though he was, he enjoyed, like a veritable pope, the acclamations of that throng, which he hated because he felt that he was hated by
“If I exist, does this exist? if this exists, do I exist?”
But it was difficult to make out whether it was a child’s cap or a king’s crown, the two things bore so strong a resemblance to each other.
The law which you apply to vagabonds, vagabonds apply to you.
One really must behold the grimace of an honest man above the hempen collar now and then; that renders the thing honorable.
all things are contained in philosophy, all men in the philosopher, as you know.”
The dragon-fly had turned into a wasp, and asked nothing better than to sting.
comet of 1465, which sent one man mad.
On the face of this aged queen of our cathedrals, by the side of a wrinkle, one always finds a scar.
To measure the great toe of the foot is to measure the giant.
Each face, each stone of the venerable monument, is a page not only of the history of the country, but of the history of science and art as well.
the greatest products of architecture are less the works of individuals than of society; rather the offspring of a nation’s effort, than the inspired flash of a man of genius;
Time is the architect, the nation is the builder.
Hence three entirely distinct aspects: churches abounded in the City; palaces, in the Town; and colleges, in the University.
the king only lets go when the people tear away.
Moreover, this proves that one can be a fine genius, and yet understand nothing of an art to which one does not belong.
Our fathers had a Paris of stone; our sons will have one of plaster.
Notre-Dame had been to him successively, as he grew up and developed, the egg, the nest, the house, the country, the universe.
It is certain that the mind becomes atrophied in a defective body.
He had picked up the weapon with which he had been wounded.
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.
But the insult generally passed unnoticed both by the priest and the bellringer. Quasimodo was too deaf to hear all these gracious things, and Claude was too dreamy.
“Printing will kill architecture.”
All civilization begins in theocracy and ends in democracy. This law of liberty following unity is written in architecture.
The architectural book belongs no longer to the priest, to religion, to Rome; it is the property of poetry, of imagination, of the people.
That capital of forces which human thought had been expending in edifices, it henceforth expends in books.
architecture is dead; irretrievably slain by the printed book,—
The grand poem, the grand edifice, the grand work of humanity will no longer be built: it will be printed.
You know that ’tis always the body which ruins the soul.
The name of a woman should be agreeable, sweet, fanciful;
“The gallows is a balance which has a man at one end and the whole earth at the other.
“The day belongs to every one, why do they give me only night?”
They were two extremes of natural and social wretchedness, coming into contact and aiding each other.
Excess of grief, like excess of joy is a violent thing which lasts but a short time. The heart of man cannot remain long in one extremity.
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.
“My misfortune is that I still resemble a man too much. I should like to be wholly a beast like that goat.”
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“When one has an idea, one encounters it in everything.”
Better philosophy and independence in rags. I prefer to be the head of a fly rather than the tail of a lion.”
When I saw that they wanted to hang people, I retired from the game.”
For even if one believes in nothing, there are moments in life when one is always of the religion of the temple which is nearest at hand.
