“As we see, he had a strange and peculiar way of judging things. I suspect that he acquired it from the Gospel.”

“Clearly, he had his own strange way of judging things. I suspect he acquired it from the Gospels.”

“He said, moreover, "Teach those who are ignorant as many things as possible; society is culpable, in that it does not afford instruction gratis; it is responsible for the night which it produces. This soul is full of shadow; sin is therein committed. The guilty one is not the person who has committed the sin, but the person who has created the shadow."It will be perceived that he had a peculiar manner of his own of judging things: I suspect that he obtained it from the Gospel.”

“For the rest, he was the same to all men, the fashionable world and the ordinary people. He judged nothing in haste, or without taking account of the cirumstances. He said, 'Let me see how the fault arose.”

“The terrible shock of his sentence had in some way broken that wall which separates us from the mystery of things beyond and which we call life.”

“The peculiarity of sunrise is to make us laugh at all our terrors of the night, and our laugh is always proportioned to the fear we have had.”

“This Boulatruelle was a man in bad odour with the people of the neighbourhood; he was too respectful, too humble, prompt to doff his cap to everybody; he always trembled and smiled in the presence of the gendarmes, was probably in secret connection with robber-bands, said the gossips, and suspected of lying in wait in the hedge corners at nightfall. He had nothing in his favour except that he was a drunkard.”