"France must have the blood of the pure to raise her again; which one of us indeed, is worthy to offer his life, and what a joy, should we be chosen."

"Persecution is upon us; it will be terrible; we will pass through torrents of blood."

"I desire, if by any possibility I should become a priest, to be a missionary, and if I am a missionary to be a martyr."

"The King, with whom I had this Discourse, was so affected with the Truth of it, that, You are in the right, said he to me; and ’tis with very great Justice that one of our Poets has elegantly compar’d all kind of Men to the Pieces, wherewith we play at Chess: Some act the Kings, the Queens, the Knights, the Fools, and simple Pawns. There is a vast Difference between them, while they are in Motion; but when once the Game is over, and the Chess-board shut, they are thrown promiscuously together into the same Box, without any manner of Distinction. Death does the very same thing: Kings, Emperors, Merchants, Slaves, Warriors, Men of the Robe, and of the Revenue, all then become equal; and there is nothing but our good Deeds and Charity towards our Neighbours, that will give us one Day a Superiority above others."

"Which is the best religion? The most tolerant."

"Modesty is the chastity of merit, the virginity of noble souls."

"There is more poverty in the human heart than misery in life."

"Utopia! such is the name with which ignorance, folly, and incredulity have always characterized the great conceptions, discoveries, enterprises, and ideas which have illustrated the ages, and marked eras in human progress."

"At the age when the faculties droop, when stern experience has destroyed all sweet illusions, man may seek solitude; but, at twenty, the affections which he is compelled to repress are a tomb in which he buries himself alive."

"Esteem is the strongest of all sympathies."

"Without the ideal, this inexhaustible source of all progress, what would man be? and what would society be?"

"A woman by whom we are loved is a vanity; a woman whom we love is a religion."

"The power of words is immense. A well-chosen word has often sufficed to stop a flying army, to change defeat into victory, and to save an empire."

"No faith has triumphed without its martyrs."

"Whenever the good done to us does not touch and penetrate the heart, it wounds and irritates our vanity."

"Illusions ruin all those whom they blind."

"Instruction is to the proletary what liberty is to the slave: the latter emancipates the body, the former emancipates the intelligence."

"Servility is to devotion what hypocrisy is to virtue."

"The woman who loves us is only a woman, but the woman we love is a celestial being whose defects disappear under the prism through which we see her."

"My aim is not to charm, but to be true; my art is to say all."

"I find that violence is very ambiguous in movies. For example, some films claim to be antiwar, but I don't think I've really seen an antiwar film. Every film about war ends up being pro-war."

"The most obscure of men has his duty, and this is my excuse for associating with great minds in sending forth a protest against evil, as a child does his duty in joining with strong men to cast a drop of water upon a conflagration."

"There is nothing that can contribute so much to its quietude and stability as the zeal and piety of kings in preserving the discipline of the Church and in defending her liberties."

"Napoleon's career was too brief to enable men to see whether his course would undergo any change."

"Fear is a natural passion, which, like all the others, is in itself neither bad nor good, but bad when it is excessive and disquieting, good when it is subordinate to reason."

"While the religious idea of a crusade inspired the secular policy of Père Joseph, intense sacerdotal and Apostolic zeal characterized him amid all his political preoccupations."

"…the Indians, having never quitted their own country, have never mixed themselves with other people, we do not find that they have suffered at home any revolutions which have overset the constitution and custom of the country. The Scythians have formerly penetrated into India, and established themselves there; from thence it comes to pass, that we find Indo Scythia in the ancient Indostan. Several Mahomedan princes, and amongst others, Mahmud son of Sebah-takin, very zealous for Mussulmanism, have made conquests in India; and India has been governed for two centuries by a house whose origin is from Tartary, and whose religion is that of Mahomet. But these circumstances, which have unnaturalized, if we may be allowed the expression, other nations, have not had the same effect upon the Indians: they have preserved, besides several idioms which are proper to them, their religion and its ministers, Brachmans and Gymnosophists; their division into casts and tribes; distinguished every one by its profession, its rites and superstitions: in a word, all that is particular to themselves, and distinguishes them from other nations, since the earliest times."

"Learned, theological, lucid, varied, firm. supernatural, and austere. Mgr. d'Hulst's direction was also sincere. 1 mean he was ever anxious to practise himself what he counselled others to do"

"When a priest can do any good to a soul he must make that his first business."

"Sire, God protect the crown of the king, for many royal crowns too have been shattered."

"Mary was conceived without sin. Behold! what the Church of Paris glories in professing and maintaining; what her Doctors hold it an honor to teach and defend; what her children are jealous of preserving as one of their dearest possessions after the sacred dogmas of faith; what they do not hesitate to regard as an immediate consequence of their faith, not believing it possible to separate in Mary, the title of Immaculate Virgin from that of Virgin Mother of God, and not considering it possible to refuse the privilege of a Conception without spot, to her who was to receive and who indeed did receive, that of the divine Maternity."

"He was a man of very clear judgment, of ripe experience, of solid wisdom, and deservedly occupies a place as one of the greatest of French surgeons of the nineteenth century."

"Some of his suggestions with regard to operations were important advances in abdominal and pelvic surgery. He was, lastly, noted as a great teacher of surgery and a consummate operator."

"Ici, elle était vraiment fille; elle obéissait à son tempérament de femme ardente et cruelle; elle vivait, plus raffinée et plus sauvage, plus exécrable et plus exquise; elle réveillait plus énergiquement les sens en léthargie de l’homme, ensorcelait, domptait plus sûrement ses volontés, avec son charme de grande fleur vénérienne, poussée dans des couches sacrilèges, élevée dans des serres impies."

"La femme est un grand enfant qu'on amuse avec des joujoux, qu'on endort avec des louanges, et qu'on séduit avec des promesses."

"Tel est le sort des femmes galantes: elles se donnent à Dieu, quand le diable n'en veut plus."

"What are the legends of the Celtiberian money? Are they the names of places, of chiefs, or of divinities? This question cannot be decided a priori and we are liable, like the ape in the fable, to take the Piraeus for a man's name. Are they a series of initials, or of abbreviated words? All these surmises suggest themselves before we engage in deciphering a legend in an unknown alphabet and language."

"His lectures bore the impress of his deep Catholic belief."

"The Church is Jesus Christ communicated. This communication has two organically linked aspects, whose phenomenology is divinely revealed. On the one hand, the MISSIO: ‘Go, teach, baptise, educate...’ (Matthew XXVIII, 18-20). This is what we find in the Church militant, ‘until the end of the age’: catechesis, the sacraments, and the government (of souls). On the other hand, there is the SESSIO: ‘You who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging...’ (Matthew 19:28). Thus, even in the Church militant, the hierarchy that manifests and realises catholicity is established. The distinction and unity between Missio and Sessio are so inherent in the Church that they are recognised by Canon Law, both universally and in particular."

"Of divine institution, the sacred hierarchy comprises, with regard to order [ratione ordinis]: bishops, priests, ministers; with regard to jurisdiction [ratione juridisdictionis]: the supreme pontificate and the subordinate episcopate..." (canon 108.3). Thus, the sacred hierarchy, one and unique, nevertheless comprises TWO rationes: the ratio ordinis pertains to the Missio, the ratio jurisdictionis to the Sessio."

"C'est dans les grands dangers qu'on voit les grands courages."

"Près du sexe tu vins, tu vis, et tu vainquis: Que ton sort est heureux! Allons, saute Marquis!"

"C'est posséder les biens que savoir s'en passer."

"Qu’un joueur est heureux! sa poche est un trésor! Sous ses heureuses mains le cuivre devient or."

"Hippocrate dit oui, mais Galien dit non."

"On aime sans raison et sans raison l'on hait."

"For the masses in the Middle Ages, the Church was the home where, united in the same thoughts, and the same consoling hopes, they spent that part of their lives which was the best, and so the longest offices of the church were the most beloved by the people."

"This is really the future of medicine, to repair the genetic code. So it is not crazy to think that one day we could treat them. The difficulty is that there is a lot of money to make the diagnosis and to kill them, and if we could put only 10% of that money into research, we would have already found the cure."

"I am an old man, and do not need much. I can live in a basement or in a garret. But whether I come up from the basement or down from the garret, I shall still be your Bishop."

"The old bishop passed the last days of a life of apostolic zeal in retirement."