"The drama is complete poetry. The ode and the epic contain it only in germ; it contains both of them in a state of high development, and epitomizes both."

"The merciful precepts of Christ will at last suffuse the Code and it will glow with their radiance. Crime will be considered an illness with its own doctors to replace your judges and its hospitals to replace your prisons. Liberty shall be equated with health. Ointments and oil shall be applied to limbs that were once shackled and branded. Infirmities that once were scourged with anger shall now be bathed with love. The cross in place of the gallows: sublime and yet so simple."

"Everything being a constant carnival, there is no carnival left."

"Prayer is an august avowal of ignorance."

"We see past time in a telescope and present time in a microscope. Hence the apparent enormities of the present."

"The ideal and the beautiful are identical; the ideal corresponds to the idea, and beauty to form; hence idea and substance are cognate."

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

"It is fathomless, since it is God. One flings into that well the labor of one's whole life, one flings in one's fortune, one flings in one's riches, one flings in one's success, one flings in one's liberty or fatherland, one flings in one's well-being, one flings in one's repose, one flings in one's joy! More! more! more! Empty the vase! tip the urn! One must finish by flinging in one's heart."

"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 separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing upon each other."

"On coming out of the chapel, a well can be seen on the left. There are two in this yard. You ask, Why is there no bucket and no pulley to this one? Because no water is drawn from it now. Why is no more water drawn from it? Because it is full of skeletons."

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

"The devotion of one man had given strength and courage to all."

"It is difficult to frighten those who are easily astonished; ignorance causes fearlessness. Children have so little claim on hell, that if they should see it they would admire it."

"Nature has made a pebble and a female. The lapidary makes the diamond, and the lover makes the woman."

"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."

"As the purse is emptied, the heart is filled."

"When the heart is dry the eye is dry."

"Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers."

"To think of shadows is a serious thing."

"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 knee upon his breast! How many times, thrown to the ground by the light, had he cried to it for mercy!"

"When a woman is talking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes."

"Let no one misunderstand our idea; we do not confound what are called 'political opinions' with that grand aspiration after progress with that sublime patriotic, democratic, and human faith, which, in our days, should be the very foundation of all generous intelligence."

"I am come to warn you. I am come to impeach your happiness. It is fashioned out of the misery of your neighbour. You have everything, and that is composed of the nothing of others. As for me, I am but a voice. Mankind is a mouth, of which I am the cry. You shall hear me!"

"He had the confidence of a man who had never been wounded."

"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 come. And it is so that it comes that we are going to die."

"Style is the substance of the subject called unceasingly to the surface."

"When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age."

"She dropped her head again on Marius' knees, and her eyelids closed. He thought the poor soul had departed. Eponine remained motionless. All at once, at the very moment when Marius fancied her asleep forever, she slowly opened her eyes in which appeared the sombre profundity of death, and said to him in a tone whose sweetness seemed already to proceed from another world:--"And by the way, Monsieur Marius, I believe that I was a little bit in love with you."She tried to smile once more and expired."

"The animal is ignorant of the fact that he knows. The man is aware of the fact that he is ignorant."

"If you would civilize a man begin with his grandmother."

"There are, as we know, powerful and illustrious atheists. At bottom, led back to the truth by their very force, they are not absolutely sure that they are atheists; it is with them only a question of definition, and in any case, if they do not believe in God, being great minds, they prove God."

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

"An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come."

"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 to kill it."

"Progress - the stride of God!"

"I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses."

"The soul has illusions as the bird has wings: it is supported by them."

"The mountains, the forest, and the sea, render men savage; they develop the fierce, but yet do not destroy the human."

"God manifests himself to us in the first degree through the life of the universe, and in the second degree through the thought of man. The second manifestation is not less holy than the first. The first is named Nature, the second is named Art."

"Stupidity talks, vanity acts."

"Those who are ignorant should be taught all you can teach them; society is to blame for not providing free public education; and society will answer for the obscurity it produces. If the soul is left in darkness, sin will be committed. The guilty party is not he who has sinned but he who created the darkness in the first place."

"Make thought a whirlwind."

"To love beauty is to see light."

"The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only."

"There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul."

"The learned man knows that he is ignorant."

"To rise from error to truth is rare and beautiful."

"Initiative is doing the right thing without being told."

"Concision in style, precision in thought, decision in life."

"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 I shall be comforted, and my heart shall melt into his, he will take my soul, and I his God.But what is this kindly old gentleman to me? And what am I to him? Just one more member of the race of unfortunates, one more shade to go with the many he has seen, one more figure to add to his total of executions."