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

210Suffering engenders passion; and while the prosperous blind themselves, or go to sleep, the hatred of the unfortunate classes kindles its torch at some sullen or ill-constituted mind, which is dreaming in a corner, and...

Thought is the toil of the intelligence, revery its voluptuousness. To replace thought with revery is to confound a poison with a food.

An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise.

At certain moments, the foot slips ; at others, the ground gives way. How many times had that conscience, furious for the right, grasped and overwhelmed him! How many times had truth, inexorable, planted her...

Frères, qui meurt ici meurt dans le rayonnement de l’avenir, et nous entrons dans une tombe toute pénétrée d’aurore.

Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.

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

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.

He thought her more beautiful than ever, with a beauty that was at once feminine and angelic, that wholeness of beauty that had moved Petrarch to song and brought Dante to his knees.

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...

Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant.

Monsieur Bienvenu was simply a man who accepted these mysterious questions…and who had in his soul a deep respect for the mystery which enveloped them.

England has two books, the Bible and Shakespeare. England made Shakespeare,but the Bible made England.

It is wrong to become absorbed in the divine law to such a degree as not to perceive human law. Death belongs to God alone. By what right do men touch that unknown thing?

Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.

La lumière est dans le livre. Ouvrez le livre tout grand. Laissez-le rayonner, laissez-le faire.

Gauvain reprit :- Et la femme ? qu’en faites-vous ?Cimourdain répondit :- Ce qu’elle est. La servante de l’homme.- Oui. A une condition.- Laquelle ?- C’est que l’homme sera le serviteur de la femme.- Y...

She dropped her head again on Marius’ knees, and her eyelids closed. He thought the poor soul had departed. Eponine remained motionless. All at once, at the very moment when Marius fancied her asleep forever,...

Every day has its great grief or its small anxiety. … One cloud is dispelled, another forms. There is hardly one day in a hundred of real joy and bright sunshine.

Reason is intelligence taking exercise. Imagination is intelligence with an erection.

As for us, we respect the past here and there, and we spare it, above all, provided that it consents to be dead. If it insists on being alive, we attack it, and we try...

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...

Love is the foolishness of men, and the wisdom of God.

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...

Enjolras caught glimpses of a luminous uprising under the dark skirts of the future.

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.

Checché se ne dica, la rivoluzione francese è il più potente passo del genere umano, dopo l’avvento di Cristo. Incompleta, sia pure; ma sublime. Essa ha trovato il valore di tutte le incognite sociali; ha...

People who are overwhelmed with troubles never do look back.They know only too well that misfortune follows in their wake.

The prosperity of right is that it is always beautiful and pure.

Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.

A cannonball travels only two thousand miles an hour; light travels two hundred thousand miles a second. Such is the superiority of Jesus Christ over Napoleon.

Let no one misunderstand our idea; we do not confound what are called ‘political opinions’ with that grand aspiration after progress with that sublime patriotic, democratic, and human faith, which, in our days, should be...

People are unlearning certain things, and they do well, provided that, while unlearning them they learn this: There is no vacuum in the human heart. Certain demolitions take place, and it is well that they...

Great griefs exhaust. They discourage us with life. The man into whom they enter feels something taken from him. In youth, their visit is sad; later on, it is ominous.

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

A certain amount of reverie is good, like a narcotic in discreet doses. It soothes the fever, occasionally high, of the brain at work, and produces in the mind a soft, fresh vapor that corrects...

Something more terrible than a hell where one suffers may be imagined, and that is a hell where one is bored.

Do not inquire he name if him who asks a shelter of you. The very man who’s embarrassed by his name is the one who needs shelter

Vous rappelez-vous notre douce vie, Lorsque nous etions si jeunes tous deux, Et que nous n’avions au coeur d’autre envie Que d’etre bien mis et d’etre amoureux, Lorsqu’en ajoutant votre age a mon age, Nous...

Every good quality runs into a defect; economy borders on avarice, the generous are not far from the prodigal, the brave man is close to the bully; he who is very pious is slightly sanctimonious;...

When the heart is dry the eye is dry.

Common sense is in spite of, not the result of, education.

Cosette, by learning that she was beautiful, lost the grace of not knowing it; an exquisite grace, for beauty heightened by artlessness is ineffable, and nothing is so adorable as dazzling innocence, going on her...

Mother’s arms are made of tenderness, and sweet sleep blesses the child who lies within.

It is a mournful task to break the sombre attachments of the past.

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

Enfin, il y a un livre, un livre qui semble d’un bout à l’autre une émanation supérieure, un livre qui est pour l’univers ce que le Koran est pour l’islamisme, ce que les Védas sont...

Relegated as he was to a corner and as though sheltered behind the billiard table, the soldiers, their eyes fixed upon Enjolras, had not even noticed Grantaire, and the sergeant was preparing to repeat the...

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