The true division of humanity is this: the luminous and the dark…To diminish the number of the dark, to increase the number of the luminous, there is the aim.

He thought of that heroic Colonel Pontmercy . . . who had left upon every field of victory in Europe drops of that same blood which he, Marius, had in his veins, who had grown...

Not being heard is no reason for silence.

Does there exist an Infinity outside ourselves? Is that infinity One, immanent and permanent, necessarily having substance, since He is infinite and if He lacked matter He would be limited, necessarily possessing intelligence since He...

To attempt, to brave, to persist, and persevere, to be faithful to one’s self, to wrestle with destiny, to astound the catastrophe by the slight fear which is causes us, now to confront unjust power,...

The realities of life do not allow themselves to be forgotten.

Emergencies have always been necessary to progress. It was darkness which produced the lamp. It was fog that produced the compass. It was hunger that drove us to exploration. And it took a depression to...

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

One may, in a case of exigency, introduce the reader in to a nuptial chamber, not into a virginal chamber. Verse would hardly venture it, prose must not.It is the interior of a flower that...

In Burgundy and in the cities of the South the tree of Liberty was planted. That is to say, a pole topped by the revolutionary red bonnet.

The boughs, without becoming detached from the trunk grow away from it.

Ricordatevi, signore: la rivoluzione francese ha avuto le sue ragioni. […] Sì, le brutalità del progresso si chiamano rivoluzioni. Quando sono finite, si riconosce questo: che il genere umano è stato maltrattato, ma ha camminato.

For a person’s nature,like a rock,can be drilled into by drops of water.For a person’s nature,like a rock,can be drilled into by drops of water.For a person’s nature,like a rock,can be drilled into by drops...

It is not enough to be happy, one must be content.

where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and who can say which has the wider vision?

In every French village there is now a lighted torch, the schoolmaster; and a mouth trying to blow it out, the priest.

J’ai quelque fois rêvé que de temps en temps des heures se détachaient de la vie des anges et venaient ici-bas traverser la destinée des hommes.

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.)

What is more melancholy and more profound than to see a thousand objects for the first and the last time? To travel is to be born and to die at every instant…

You ask me what forces me to speak? a strange thing; my conscience.

Amis, un dernier mot! – et je ferme à jamaisCe livre à ma pensée étranger désormais,Je n’écouterai pas ce qu’en dira la foule,Car qu’importe à la source où son onde s’écoule?

No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.

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...

Il y a des illusions touchantes qui sont peut-être des réalités sublimes.

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

That I may carry on what I have begun, that I may do good, that I may be one day a grand and encouraging example that it may be said that there was finally some...

The women laughed and wept; the crowd stamped their feet enthusiastically, for at that moment Quasimodo was really beautiful. He was handsome — this orphan, this foundling, this outcast.

The poor young man must work for his bread; he eats; when he has eaten, he has nothing left but reverie. He enters God’s theater free; he sees the sky, space, the stars, the flowers,...

Meilė turi pačios sielos savybių. Ji tos pačios prigimties. Kaip ir siela, ji – dieviškoji kibirkštis, kaip ir siela, ji netrūnijanti, nedaloma, nenykstanti. Tai ugninis vidurkis, nemirtingas ir begalinis, kurio mumyse niekas negali apriboti ir...

Without knowing it, Javert in his awful happiness was deserving of pity, like every ignorant man who triumphs. Nothing could have been more poignant or more heartrending than that countenance on which was inscribed all...

In the chaos of sentiments and passions which defend a barricade, there is something of everything; there is bravery, youth, honor, enthusiasm, the ideal, conviction, the eager fury of the gamester, and above all, intervals...

Revolutions spring not from accident, but from necessity. A revolution is a return from the factitious to the real. It takes place because it must.

Marius and Cosette were in the dark in regard to each other. They did not speak, they did not bow, they were not acquainted; they saw each other; and, like the stars in the sky...

One drop of wine is enough to redden a whole glass of water.

Let us not, however, exaggerate our power. Whatever man does, the great lines of creation persist; the supreme mass does not depend on man. He has power over the detail, not over the whole. And...

What a great thing, to be loved! What a greater thing still, to love! The heart becomes heroic though passion…if no one loved, the sun would go out.

Those who do not weep, do not see.

There is nothing like a dream to create the future.

Darks drifts covered the horizon. A strange shadow approaching nearer and nearer, was spreading little by little over men, over things, over ideas; a shadow which came from indignations and from systems. All that had...

There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.

He was troubled; this brain, so limpid in its blindness, had lost its transparency; there was a cloud in this crystal.

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

Curiosity is gluttony. To see is to devour.

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...

[He] had to submit to the fate of every newcomer in a small town, where many tongues talk but few heads think.

Sia detto alla sfuggita, il successo è una cosa piuttosto lurida; la sua falsa somiglianza col merito inganna gli uomini. Per la folla, la riuscita ha quasi lo stesso profilo della supremazia. Il successo, sosia...

The sadness which reigned everywhere was but an excuse for unfailing kindness.

There, at a depth to which divers would find it difficult to descend, are caverns, haunts, and dusky mazes, where monstrous creatures multiply and destroy each other. Huge crabs devour fish and are devoured in...

Sin is a gravitation.

Intellectual and moral growth is no less indispensable than material improvement. Knowledge is a viaticum. Though is a prime necessity; truth is nourishment, like wheat. A reasoning faculty, deprived of knowledge and wisdom, pines away....