“What matters deafness of the ear, when the mind hears? The one true deafness, the incurable deafness, is that of the mind.”

“The transept belfry and the two towers were to him three great cages, the birds in which, taught by him, would sing for him alone. Yet it was these same bells which had made him deaf; but mothers are often fondest of the child who has made them suffer most.”

“When a man is out of sight, it is not too long before he is out of mind.”

“I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses.”

“Thoughtful minds make little use of this expression: the happy and the unhappy. In this world, clearly a vestibule of another, no one is happy.”

“It may indeed be said that the word is never a more splendid mystery than when it travels in a man's mind from thought to conscience and back again to thought.”

“Wonderful nature has a double meaning, which dazzles great minds and blinds uncultivated souls. When man is ignorant, when the desert is filled with visions, the darkness of solitude is added to the darkness of intelligence; hence, in man, the possibilities of perdition”