Let us study things that are no more. It is necessary to understand them, if only to avoid them.

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...

That it was no doubt a dark hour, but that he should get through it; that after all he held his destiny, evil as it might be, in his own hand; that he was master...

Homo homini monstrum

La suprema dicha de la vida, es la convicción de que se es amado; amado por sí mismo, digamos mejor, ama do a pesar de sí mismo.

He was fond of saying, “There is a bravery of the priest as well as the bravery of a colonel of dragoons,–only,” he added, “ours must be tranquil.

Admirable, however, as the Paris of the present day appears to you, build up and put together again in imagination the Paris of the fifteenth century; look at the light through that surprising host of...

A bird alone could have extricated himself from that place.

The cities make ferocious men because they may corrupt man. The mountain, the sea, the forest, make savage men; they development fierce side, but often without destroying the humane side.

Promise to give me a kiss on my brow when I am dead. –I shall feel it.”She dropped her head again on Marius’ knees, and her eyelids closed. He thought the poor soul had departed....

The guillotine is the ultimate expression of Law, and its name is vengeance; it is not neutral, nor does it allow us to remain neutral.

A criminal remains a criminal whether he uses a convict’s suit or a monarch’s crown.

He fell to the seat, she by his side. There were no more words. The stars were beginning to shine. How was it that their lips met? How is it that the birds sing, the...

Common right is nought but the protection of all radiating over the right of each. This protection of all is termed Fraternity. The point of intersection of all these aggregated sovereignties is called Society. This...

La suprema felicità della vita è essere amati per quello che si è, o meglio, essere amati a dispetto di quello che si è.

The soul of the just contemplates in sleep a mysterious heaven.

In the future no one will kill anyone, the earth will shine, the human race will love. It will come, citizens, the day when all will be peace, harmony, light, joy, and life, it will...

Ah, Monsieur Priest, you love not the crudities of the true. Christ loved them. He seized a rod and cleared out the Temple. His scourge, full of lightnings, was a harsh speaker of truths. When...

Ništa je umreti – strašno je ne živeti.

The shadow of the passions of the moment transversed this grand and gentle spirit occupied with eternal things.

Das Lachen ist die Sonne, die aus dem menschlichen Antlitz den Winter vertreibt.

Each man should frame life so that at some future hour fact and his dreaming meet.

From Les Miserables:All at once, in the midst of this profound calm, a fresh sound arose; a sound as celestial, divine, ineffable, ravishing, as the other had been horrible. It was a hymn which issued...

To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.

I repeat, whether we be Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns us all.

He did not seek to assume the mantle of Elijah, to shed a light of the future upon the misty turmoil of events or resolve the prevailing light into a single flame; there was in...

Melancholy is the happiness of being sad.

What a grand thing it is to be loved! What a far grander thing it is to love! The heart becomes heroic, by dint of passion.

The French Revolution, which is nothing more nor less than the ideal armed with the sword, rose abruptly, and by that very movement, closed the door of evil and opened the door of good.It released...

He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two.

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...

There are moments when a rope’s end, a pole, the branch of the tree, is life itself, and it is a frightful thing to see a living being lose his hold upon it, and fall...

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)

Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing.

So bring me this man, trembling and shivering from head to foot; let me fall into his arms or down at his knees; he will weep and we shall weep, he will be eloquent and...

This light of history is pitiless; it has a strange and divine quality that, luminous as it is, and precisely because it is luminous, often casts a shadow just where we saw a radiance; out...

There is a prospect greater than the sea, and that is the sky; there is a prospect greater than the sky, and it is the human soul.

These two beings, who had loved each other so exclusively, and with so touching a love, and who had lived so long for each other, were now suffering beside one another and through one another;...

Let us never weary of repeating, that to think first of the disinherited and sorrowful classes; to relieve, ventilate, enlighten, and love them; to enlarge their horizon to a magnificent extent; to lavish upon them...

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

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...

To breathe Paris is to preserve one’s soul.

The saints were his friends, and blessed him; the monsters were his friends, and guarded him.

Genuflection before the idol or the dollar destroys the muscles which walk and the will that moves.

You who suffer because you love, love still more. To die of love, is to live by it.

Passando fra gli insorti che si scostavano con religioso rispetto, [papà Mabeuf] continuò dritto verso Enjolras che indietreggiava impietrito, gli strappò la bandiera, e senza che nessuno osasse trattenerlo né aiutarlo, quel vecchio ottuagenario col...

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.

He left her. She was dissatisfied with him. He had preferred to incur her anger rather than cause her pain. He had kept all the pain for himself.

Where would the shout of love begin, if not from the summit of sacrifice? Oh my brothers, this is the junction between those who think and those who suffer; this barricade is made neither of...

The judge speaks in the name of justice,’ he said. ‘The priest speaks in the name of pity, which is only a higher form of justice.’ (Bishop Myriel)