I have a dream my life would be. So different from this hell I’m living. So different now from what it seem. Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.”*Fantine

If he had had all Peru in his pocket, he would certainly have given it to this dancer; but Gringoire had not Peru in his pocket; and besides, America was not yet discovered. (p. 66)

Listen, Monsieur Director, here’s what I think. Obviously this is wrong. There are twenty-six of you in five or six small rooms; there are three of us in space enough for sixty. That is wrong, I assure you. You have my house and I am in yours. Give me back mine and this will be...

Cosette, in her seclusion, like Marius in his, was all ready to take fire. Destiny, with its mysterious and fatal patience, was slowly bringing these two beings near each other, fully charged and all languishing with the stormy electricities of passion,—these two souls which held love as two clouds hold lightning, and which were to...

This conflict between right and fact has endured since the origins of society. To bring the duel to an end, to consolidate the pure ideal with the human reality, to make the right peacefully interpenetrate the fact, and the fact the right, this is the work of the wise.

La vie, le malheur, l’isolement, l’abandon, la pauvreté, sont des champs de bataille qui ont leurs héros ; héros obscurs plus grands parfois que les héros illustres.

Quel champ de bataille que l’homme ! Nous sommes livrés à ces dieux, à ces monstres, à ces géants, nos pensées.

The earth is a great piece of stupidity.

Whatever causes night in our souls may leave stars. Cimourdain was full of virtues and truth, but they shine out of a dark background.

There is, we are aware, a philosophy that denies the infinite. There is also a philosophy, classified as pathologic, that denies the sun; this philosophy is called blindness. To set up a theory that lacks a source of truth is an excellent example of blind assurance. And the odd part of it is the haughty...

Hope is the Word which God has written on the brow of every man.

This is one of those rare moments when, while doing that which it is one’s duty to do, one feels something which disconcerts one, and which would dissuade one from proceeding further; one persists, it is necessary, but conscience, though satisfied, is sad, and the accomplishment of duty is complicated with a pain at the...

Night sometimes lends such tragic assistance to catastrophe.

What greater flood can there be than the flood of ideas? How quickly they submerge all that they set out to destroy, how rapidly do they create terrifying depths?

Vero o falso che sia, quel che si dice degli uomini occupa spesso altrettanto posto nella loro vita, e soprattutto nel loro destino, quanto quello che fanno.

Il volgo è un vecchio Narciso che adora se stesso e applaude il volgare.

Madame Thenardier was approaching her forties, which is equivalent to fifty in a woman…

Et ces deux mes, sœurs tragiques, s’envolèrent ensemble, l’ombre de l’une mêlée à la lumière de l’autre.

To study in Paris is to be born in Paris!

I wanted to see you again, touch you, know who you were, see if I would find you identical with the ideal image of you which had remained with me and perhaps shatter my dream with the aid of reality.-Claude Frollo

To put everything in balance is good, to put everything in harmony is better.

Every bird that flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw.

There comes an hour when protest no longer suffices; after philosophy there must be action; the strong hand finishes what the idea has sketched.

A bird alone could have extricated himself from that place.

One might almost say that affinities begin with the letters of the alphabet. In that sequence, O and P are inseparable. You might just as well say O and P as Orestes and Pylades. A true satellite of Enjolras, Grantaire lived within this circle of young men. He dwelt among them, only with them was...

Whether true or false, what is said about men often has as much influence on their lives, and particularly on their destinies, as what they do.

And do you know Monsieur Marius? I believe I was a little in love with you.

Who has been unhooking the stars without my permission, and putting them on the table in the guise of candles?

Good night! Good night!Far flies the light;But still God’s loveShall shine above,Making all bright,Good night! Good night!

There exists yonder in the mountains,” said the Bishop, “a tiny community no bigger than that, which I have not seen for three years. They are my good friends, those gentle and honest shepherds. They own one goat out of every thirty that they tend. They make very pretty woollen cords of various colors, and...

I have an old hat which is not worth three francs, I have a coat which lacks buttons in front, my shirt is all ragged, my elbows are torn, my boots let in the water; for the last six weeks I have not thought about it, and I have not told you about it. You...

Happy, even in anguish, is he to whom God has given a soul worthy of love and grief! He who has not seen the things of this world, and the heart of men in this double light, has seen nothing, and knows noting of the truth.

L’ me qui aime et qui souffre est à l’état sublime.

On résiste à l’invasion des armées; on ne résiste pas à l’invasion des idées.(One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas.)

In the morning, when he entered my room, I grumbled, but he was like the sunlight to me, all the same. One cannot defend oneself against those brats. They take hold of you, they hold you fast, they never let you go again. The truth is, that there never was a cupid like that child.

While a battle still entirely political was preparing in this same place which had already seen so many revolutionary events, while the youth, the secret associations, the schools in the name of principles, and the middle class in the name of interests, were moving in to dash against each other, to grapple and overthrow each...

All this ferment was public, we might almost say tranquil.The imminent insurrection gathered its storm calmly in the face of the government. No singularity was lacking in this crisis, still subterranean, but already perceptible. The middle class talked quietly with workingmen about the preparations. They would say, “How is the uprising coming along?” in the...

He was Antinous, wild. You would have said, seeing the thoughtful reflection of his eye, that he had already, in some preceding existence, been through the revolutionary apocalypse. He knew its tradition like an eyewitness. He knew every little detail of that great thing.A pontifical and warrior nature, strange in a youth. He was officiating...

That is because our barricade is made of good intentions.

Every man who has in his soul a secret feeling of revolt against any act of the State, of life, or of destiny, is on the verge of riot; and so soon as it appears, he begins to quiver, and to feel himself borne away by the whirlwind.

To love and be loved, that is the miracle of youth

Usually, the murmur that rises up from Paris by day is the city talking; in the night it is the city breathing; but here it is the city singing. Listen, then, to this chorus of bell-towers – diffuse over the whole the murmur of half a million people – the eternal lament of the river...

He was fine; he, that orphan that foundling that outcast; he felt himself august and strong; he looked full in the face that society from which he was banished, and into which he had so powerfully intervened; that human justice from which he had snatched its prey; all those tigers whose jaws perforce remained empty;...

It is a false and dangerous situation which bases public power on private want, and roots the grandeur of the State in the suffering of the individual. It is a badly constituted grandeur which combines all the material elements, and into which no moral element enters.

La philosophie est le microscope de la pensée.

Qui que vousw soyez qui voulez cultiver, vivifier, édifier, attendrir, apaiser… mettez des livres partout. [Ouverture du congrès littéraire international de 1878)]

There is in every village a torch – the teacher:and an extinguisher – the clergyman.

The sole social evil is darkness; humanity is identity, for all men are made of the same clay.

From a political point of view, there is but one principle, the sovereignty of man over himself. This sovereignty of myself over myself is called Liberty

Para el obispo, la vista de la guillotina fue un golpe terrible del cual tardó mucho tiempo en reponerse. En efecto: el patíbulo, cuando está ante nuestros ojos levantado, derecho, tiene algo que alucina. Se puede sentir cierta indiferencia hacia la pena de muerte, no pronunciarse ni en pro ni en contra, no decir ni...