Un désespoir calme, froid, sinistre.

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...

Well, listen a moment, Monsieur Mayor; I have often been severe in my life towards others. It was just. I did right. Now if I were not severe towards myself, all I have justly done...

Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in...

He loved books, those undemanding but faithful friends.

Les bras d’une mère sont faits de tendresse et un doux sommeil benit l’enfant qui s’y abandonne.

He sought…to transform the grief which looks down into the grave by showing it the grief which looks up to the stars.

This cavern is below all, and the enemy of all; it is hatred, without exception.

She had spears of straw and grass in her hair, not like Ophelia gone mad through contact with Hamlet’s madness, but because she had slept in some stable loft.

There were corpses here and there and pools of blood. I remember seeing a butterfly flutter up and down that street. Summer does not abdicate.

…Man has a tyrant, ignorance. I voted for the demise of that particular tyrant. That particular tyrant has engendered royalty, which is authority based on falsehood, whereas science is authority based on truth. Man should...

Allez, philosophes, enseignez, éclairez, allumez, pensez haut, parlez haut, courez joyeux au grand soleil, fraternisez avec les places publiques, annoncez les bonnes nouvelles, prodiguez les alphabets, proclamez les droits, chantez les Marseillaises, semez les enthousiasmes,...

I see a dark light.

Happiness lies for those who cry, those who hurt, those who have searched, and those who have tried for only they can appreciate the importance of people who have touched their lives.

What is admirable in the clash of young minds is that no one can foresee the spark that sets off an explosion or predict what kind of explosion it will be.

Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.

Death does not concern me. He who takes his first step uses perhaps his last shoes. (Halmalo)

This exists. It can be seen. It can be touched. These in pace, these dungeons, these iron hinges, these necklets, that lofty peep-hole on a level with the river’s current, that box of stone closed...

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...

Perseverance, secret of all triumphs.

In that pallid and sullen shadow in which he crawled, whenever he turned his head and endeavoured to raise his eyes, he saw, with mingled rage and terror, forming, massing, and mounting up out of...

Ce que Paris conseille, l’Europe le médite ; ce que Paris commence, l’Europe le continue.

Nothing is more imminent than the impossible . . . what we must always foresee is the unforeseen.

He said to himself that he really had not suffered enough to deserve such radiant happiness, and he thanked God, in the depths of his soul, for having permitted that he, a miserable man, should...

If people did not love one another, I really don’t see what use there would be in having any spring.

Do not forget, do not ever forget, that you have promised me to use the money to make yourself an honest man.’Valjean, who did not recall having made any promise, was silent. The bishop had...

Certainly, I approve of political opinions, but there are people who do not know where to stop.

At the side of Enjolras, who represented the logic of revolution, was Combeferre, representing its philosophy. The difference between logic and philosophy is that one can decide upon war, whereas the other can only be...

As with stomachs, we should pity minds that do not eat.

This is the shade of difference: the door of the physician should never be shut, the door of the priest should always be open.

After he had fully determined that the young man was at the bottom of this state of affairs, and that it all came from him, he Jean Valjean, the regenerated man, the man who had...

Les révolutions sont de magnifiques improvisatrices. Un peu échevelées quelquefois.

«C’ero, prima di nascere? No. Ci sarò dopo la morte? No. Che sono? Un po’ di polvere tenuta insieme da un organismo. Che cosa debbo fare su questa terra? Ho la scelta: o soffrire, o...

The driver, a black silhouette upon his box, whipped up his bony horses. Icy silence in the coach. Marius, motionless, his body braced in the corner of the carriage, his head dropping down upon his...

Right is just and true.

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.

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.

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...