Tom > Tom's Quotes

“Mrs General had no opinions. Her way of forming a mind was to prevent it from forming opinions. She had a little circular set of mental grooves or rails on which she started little trains of other people's opinions, which never overtook one another, and never got anywhere.”
― Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

“First, not a word more from you about the past. There was an error in your calculations. I know what that is. It affects the whole machine, and failure is the consequence. You will profit by the failure, and will avoid it another time. I have done a similar thing myself, in construction, often. Every failure teaches a man something, if he will learn; and you are too sensible a man not to learn from this failure.”
― Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

“It was evident from the general tone of the whole party, that they had come to regard insolvency as the normal state of mankind, and the payment of debts as a disease that occasionally broke out.”
― Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

“That it is at least as difficult to stay a moral infection as a physical one; that such a disease will spread with the malignity and rapidity of the Plague; that the contagion, when it has once made head, will spare no pursuit or condition, but will lay hold on people in the soundest health, and become developed in the most unlikely constitutions; is a fact as firmly established by experience”
― Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

“I have seen something of this world," she said over the trays, "and there are but two sorts of women in it-- those who take the strength out of a man, and those who put it back. Once I was that one, and now I am this.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Kim

“There is no sin so great as ignorance. Remember this.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Kim

“Damage hardens us all. It will harden you too, when it finds you—and it will find you”
― William Landay, Defending Jacob

“We are pattern-seeking, storytelling animals, and have been since we began drawing on cave walls.”
― William Landay, Defending Jacob

“What sets our species apart is not just what men will do to other men, but how tirelessly they justify it.”
― William Dietrich, Napoleon's Pyramids

“Do we fear death? Of course. But it is death that makes room for birth, and the cycle of life is as natural as the rise and fall of the Nile. Death is our last and greatest duty.”
― William Dietrich, Napoleon's Pyramids

“She let her head fall back upon Marius' knees and her eyelids closed. He thought that poor soul had gone. Eponine lay motionless; but just when Marius supposed her for ever asleep, she slowly opened her eyes in which the gloomy deepness of death appeared, and said to him with an accent the sweetness on which already seemed to come from another world:

"And then, do you know, Monsieur Marius, I believe I was a little in love with you."

She essayed to smile again and expired.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“But secondly you say 'society must exact vengeance, and society must punish'. Wrong on both counts. Vengeance comes from the individual and punishment from God.”
― Victor Hugo, The Last Day of a Condemned Man

“As with stomachs, we should pity minds that do not eat.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“There are people who observe the rules of honor as one observes the stars, from a great distance.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

“Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Promise to give me a kiss on my brow when I am dead. --I shall feel it."

She dropped her head again on Marius' knees, and her eyelids closed. He thought the poor soul had departed. Eponine remained motionless. All at once, at the very moment when Marius fancied her asleep forever, she slowly opened her eyes in which appeared the sombre profundity of death, and said to him in a tone whose sweetness seemed already to proceed from another world:--

"And by the way, Monsieur Marius, I believe that I was a little bit in love with you.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“You ask me what forces me to speak? a strange thing; my conscience.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“He who opens a school door, closes a prison.”
― Victor Hugo

“The future has several names. For the weak, it is impossible; for the fainthearted, it is unknown; but for the valiant, it is ideal.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“What is said about men often has as much influence upon their lives, and especially upon their destinies, as what they do.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Diamonds are to be found only in the darkness of the earth, and truth in the darkness of the mind. ”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“One can no more keep the mind from returning to an idea than the sea from returning to a shore. For a sailor, this is called the tide; in the case of the guilty it is called remorse. God stirs up the soul as well as the ocean.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Man is not a circle with a single center; he is an ellipse with two focii. Facts are one, ideas are the other.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“He had not lived long enough to have discovered that nothing is more close at hand than the impossible, and what must be looked for is the unforeseen.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?

But where are the snows of years gone by?”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“two principal problems.

First problem: To produce wealth.

Second problem: To distribute it....

England solves the first of these two problems. She creates wealth wonderfully; she distributes it badly.... [she has] a grandeur ill constituted, in which all the material elements are combined, and into which no moral element enters.

Communism think they have solved the second problem. They are mistaken. They destroy production...”
― Victor Hugo

“[Rakel] It feels a bit like jumping out of a burning house. Falling is better than burning.

[Harry] At least until you land.

[Rakel] I've come to realize that falling and living have certain things in common. For a start, both are very temporary states of being.”
― Jo Nesbø, The Devil's Star

“...stereotypes were self-reinforcing because unconsciously you were looking for things to confirm them. That was why policemen thought – based on so-called experience – that all criminals were stupid, and criminals thought the same about all policemen.”
― Jo Nesbø, The Devil's Star

“To define is to limit.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray