"I had rather be hissed for a good verse than applauded for a bad one."

"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 of hope."

"In the French language, there is a great gulf between prose and poetry; in English, there is hardly any difference. It is a splendid privilege of the great literary languages Greek, Latin, and French that they possess a prose. English has not this privilege. There is no prose in English."

"As for methods of prayer, all are good, as long as they are sincere."

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

"To be a saint is to be an exception; to be a true man is the rule. Err, fail, sin if you must, but be upright. To sin as little as possible is the law for men; to sin not at all is a dream for angels. All earthly things are subject to sin; if is like the force of gravity."

"Because things are not agreeable," said Jean Valjean, "that is no reason for being unjust towards God."

"Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age."

"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 is infinite and, lacking intelligence, He would be in that sense finite. Does this Infinity inspire in us the idea of essense, while to ourselves we can only attribute the idea of existence? In order words, is He not the whole of which we are but the part?"

"The head which does not turn backwards towards horizons that have vanished contains neither thought nor love."

"One day of happiness is worth more than a lifetime of sorrow .... Under ordinary circumstances, jealousy is a suspicion to the person who excites it and degrading to the person who indulges it."

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

"Our acts make or mar us, we are the children of our own deeds."

"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 of the same man it makes two different phantoms, and the one attacks and punishes the other, the darkness of the despot struggles with the splendor of the captain. Hence a truer measure in the final judgment of the nations. Babylon violated diminishes Alexander; Rome enslaved diminishes Caesar; massacred Jerusalem diminishes Titus. Tyranny follows the tyrant. Woe to the man who leaves behind a shadow that bears his form."

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

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

"A mother's arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them."

"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 the fact, and the fact the right, this is the work of the wise."

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

"A week passed, and Jean Valjean had not taken a step in his room. He still remained in bed. The portress said to her husband:""The good man upstairs yonder does not get up, he no longer eats, he will not last long. That man has his sorrows, that he has. You won't get it out of my head that his daughter has made a bad marriage."The porter replied, with the tone of marital sovereignty:"If he's rich, let him have a doctor. If he is not rich, let him go without. If he has no doctor he will die.""And if he has one?""He will die," said the porter."

"Men become accustomed to poison by degrees."

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

"Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent."

"To err his human, to stroll is Parisian."

"I am a soul. I know well that what I shall render up to the grave is not myself. That which is myself will go elsewhere. Earth, thou art not my abyss!"

"Phoebus de Chateaupers likewise came to a 'tragic end': he married."

"No one knows like a woman how to say things which are at once gentle and deep."

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

"The earth is a great piece of stupidity."

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

"He who opens a school door, closes a prison."

"Peace is the virtue of civilization. War is its crime."

"Blessed be Providence which has given to each his toy: the doll to the child, the child to the woman, the woman to the man, the man to the devil!"

"Freedom in art, freedom in society, this is the double goal towards which all consistent and logical minds must strive."

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

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

"Le ciel A©tait absolument noir, il n'y avait plus d'A©toiles, mais A©videmment il en voyait une."

"Joy's smile is much closer to tears than laughter."

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

"We do not claim that the portrait we are making is the whole truth, only that it is a resemblance."

"Civil war? What does that mean? Is there any foreign war? Isn't every war fought between men, between brothers?"

"Try as you will, you cannot annihilate that eternal relic of the human heart, love."

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

"Argot is both a literary and a social phenomenon. What is argot, properly speaking? Argot is the language of misery."