What is really important in Man is the part of him that we do not understand. Of much of it we are not even conscious, just as we are not normally conscious of keeping up our circulation by our heart-pump, though if we neglect it we die.
One man may read the Bhagavata by the light of a lamp, and another may commit a forgery by that very light; but the lamp is unaffected. The sun sheds its light on the wicked as well as on the virtuous.
Kings cannot ennoble thee, thou good, great soul, for One who is higher than kings hath done that for thee; but a king can confirm thy nobility to men.
To destroy abuses is not enough; Habits must also be changed. The windmill has gone, but the wind is still there." ~old man G--- to Monseigneur Bienvenu Myriel
The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.
God Almighty first planted a Garden. And indeed it is the purest of human pleasures. It is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man, without which buildings and palaces are but gross handiworks. And a man shall ever see, that when ages grow to civility and elegancy, men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely, as if gardening were the greater perfection.
What could be more serious than the love of man for woman, what more commanding, more impressive, bearing in its bosom the seeds of death; at the same time these lovers, these people entering into illusion glittering eyed, must be danced round with mockery, decorated with garlands.
It is only the man whose intellect is clouded by his sexual impulse that could give the name of the fair sex to that undersized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and short-legged race.
In spite of all the dishonour, the broken standards, the broken lives, The broken faith in one place or another, There was something left that was more than the tales Of old men on winter evenings.
...the counsels of the Divine Mind had some glimpse of truth when they said that men are born in order to suffer the penalty for sins committed in a former life.
What a man sees in the human race is merely himself in the deep and honest privacy of his own heart. Byron despised the race because he despised himself. I feel as Byron did, and for the same reason.
Thus with most careful devotion Thus with precise attention To detail, interfering preparation Of that which is already prepared Men lighten the knot of confusion Into perfect misunderstanding, Reflecting a pocket-torch of observation.