The earth is a great piece of stupidity.

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved — loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

I see black light (his last words)

However, this sceptic had one fanaticism. This fanaticism was neither a dogma, nor an idea, nor an art, nor a science; it was a man: Enjolras. Grantaire admired, loved, and venerated Enjolras. To whom did...

What was more needed by this old man who divided the leisure hours of his life, where he had so little leisure, between gardening in the daytime, and contemplation at night? Was not this narrow...

So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to divine...

It is only barbarous nations who have a sudden growth after a victory

Being good is easy, what is difficult is being just.

Revolution is the accession of the peoples, and, at the bottom, the People is Man.

No one is a good historian of the patent, visible, striking, and public life of peoples, if he is not, at the same time, in a certain measure, the historian of their deep and hidden...

Le livre, comme livre, appartient à l’auteur, mais comme pensée, il appartient -le mot n’est pas trop vaste- au genre humain. Toutes les intelligences y ont droit. Si l’un des deux droits, le droit de...

Every blade has two edges; he who wounds with one wounds himself with the other.

Winter changes into stone the water of heaven and the heart of man.

This first glance of a soul which does not yet know itself is like dawn in the heavens; it is the awakening of something radiant and unknown.

In joined hands there is still some token of hope, in the clinched fist none.

Sans la moindre métaphore et dans toute l’acception du mot, vivre, c’est brûler.

I advance in life, I grow more simple, and I become more and more patriotic for humanity.

Loving is half of believing.

He had to accept the fate of every newcomer to a small town where there are plenty of tongues that gossip and few minds that think.

Die, very good, but do not make others die. Suicides like the one which is about to take place here are sublime, but suicide is restricted, and does not allow of extension; and so soon...

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...

He who every morning plans the transactions of that day and follows that plan carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life.

Man is not a circle with a single center; he is an ellipse with two focii. Facts are one, ideas are the other.

Elle était morte avec cette joie tragique des cœurs jaloux qui entraînent l’être aimé dans leur mort, et qui disent : personne ne l’aura !

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,...

A library implies an act of faith which generations, still in darkness hid, sign in their night in witness of the dawn.”À qui la faute? (1872)

Profound hearts, wise minds, take life as God makes it; it is a long trial, and unintelligible preparation for the unknown destiny.

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...