The Black Tulip

Sometimes one has suffered enough to have the right to never say: I am too happy.

It is quite rare for God to provide a great man at the necessary moment to carry out some great deep, which is why when this unusual combination of circumstance does occur, history at once records the name of the chosen one and recommends him to the admiration of posterity.

You scholars, you're in communication with the devil.

Misfortune does not help us to believe.

God orders a man to do all he can to save his life.

But there is this terrible thing in evil thoughts, that evil minds soon grow familiar with them.

There is nothing more galling to angry people than the coolness of those on whom they wish to vent their spleen.

There are some catastrophes that a poor writer's pen cannot describe and which he is obliged to leave to the imagination of his readers with a bald statement of the facts.

I'd rather have ten soldiers to guard than a single scholar.

And then, after the first blush of the admiration which he could not help feeling, he began to be tortured by the pangs of envy, by that slow fever which creeps over the heart and changes it into a nest of vipers, each devouring the other and ever born anew.

did what people will do in politics, or on the sea when the wind is against them,—I tacked.

What difference is there between the figure of the conqueror and that of the pirate?" said the ancients. The difference only between the eagle and the vulture,—serenity or restlessness.

...by degrees they waxed more and more angry by their own shouts, and as they were not able to understand how any one could have courage without showing it by cries, they attributed the silence of the dragoons to pusillanimity, and advanced one step towards the prison, with all the turbulent mob following in their wake.

To despise flowers is to offend God.