“An army is a strange contrivance in which power is the sum of a vast total of impotence.”

“The unforeseen, that strange, haughty power which plays with man, had seized Gauvain and held him fast.”

“More powerful than the mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.”

“To blame or praise men on account of the result, is almost like praising or blaming figures on account of the sum total. Whatever is to happen, happens; whatever is to blow, blows. The eternal serenity does not suffer from these north winds. Above Revolutions, Truth and Justice reign, as the starry heavens above the tempest.”

“With a remainder of that brotherly compassion which is never totally absent from the heart of a drinker, Phoebus rolled Jehan with his foot onto one of those poor man's pillows which Providence provides on all the street corners of Paris and which the rich disdainfully refer to as heaps of garbage.”

“The most powerful symptom of love is a tenderness which becomes at times almost insupportable.”

“It is immoral that a mattress should have so much power. Triumph of that which yields over that which strikes with lightning. But never mind, glory to the mattress which annuls a cannon!”