"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, again to insult intoxicated victory, to hold firm and withstand -- such is the example which nations need and the light which electrifies them."

"Wisdom is a sacred communion."

"First of all, I wish you love, and that by loving you may also be loved.But if it's not like that, be brief in forgettingAnd after you've forgotten, don't keep anything."

"Melancholy is the happiness of being sad."

"Release is not the same as liberation. You get out of jail, all right, but you never stop being condemned."

"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 breast, his arms hanging, his legs rigid, appeared to await nothing now but a coffin; Jean Valjean seemed made of shadow, and Javert of stone."

"Genius is a promontory jutting out into the infinite."

"The shadow of the passions of the moment transversed this grand and gentle spirit occupied with eternal things."

"Should we continue to look upwards? Is the light we can see in the sky one of those which will presently be extinguished? The ideal is terrifying to behold... brilliant but threatened on all sides by the dark forces that surround it: nevertheless, no more in danger than a star in the jaws of the clouds."

"Style is the shape the ideal takes, rhythm, its movement."

"Genius: the superhuman in man."

"If you ask the great city, 'Who is this person?,' she will answer, 'He is my child."

"To learn to read is to light a fire, every syllable that is spelled out is a spark."

"Why, there's the air, the sky, the morning, the evening, moonlight, my friends, women, the beautiful architecture of Paris to study, three big books to write and all sorts of other things. Anaxagoras used to say that he was in the world in order to admire the sun. And then I have the good fortune to be able to spend my days from morning to night in the company of a man of genius - myself - and it's very pleasant."

"Formerly these harsh cells in which the discipline of the prison leaves the condemned to himself were composed of four stone walls, a ceiling of stone, a pavement of tiles, a camp bed, a grated air-hole, a double iron door, and were called "dungeons" ; but the dungeon has been thought too horrible; now it is composed ofan iron door, a grated air-hole, a camp bed, a pavement of tiles, a ceiling of stone, four stone walls, and it is called "punishment cell."

"What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past."

"Sublime upon sublime scarcely presents a contrast, and we need a little rest from everything, even the beautiful."

"The three great problems of this century; the degradation of man in the proletariat, the subjection of women through hunger, the atrophy of the child by darkness."

"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."

"Well, for us, in history where goodness is a rare pearl, he who was good almost takes precedence over he who was great."

"Those who live are those who fight."

"The last resort of kings, the cannonball. The last resort of the people, the paving stone."

"In a little town, there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think."

"Where no plan is laid where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incident chaos will soon reign."

"Be happy without picking flaws."

"Great griefs exhaust. They discourage us with life. The man into whom they enter feels something taken from him. In youth, their visit is sad; later on, it is ominous."

"I repeat, whether we be Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns us all."

"Right is just and true."

"Religions do a useful thing: they narrow God to the limits of man. Philosophy replies by doing a necessary thing: it elevates man to the plane of God."

"What makes night within us may leave stars."

"The wise man does not grow old, but ripens."

"Son, brother, father, lover, friend. There is room in the heart for all the affections, as there is room in heaven for all the stars."

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

"Life is a flower of which love is the honey."

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

"Liberation is not deliverance."

"When a man is out of sight, it is not too long before he is out of mind."

"The night was starless and very dark. Without doubt, in the gloom some mighty angel was standing, with outstretched wings, awaiting the soul."

"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 you fast, they never let you go again. The truth is, that there never was a cupid like that child."

"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. We should feel the same pity for minds that do not eat as for stomachs. If there be anything sadder than a body perishing for want of bread, it is a mind dying of hunger for lack of light. All progress tends toward the solution. Some day, people will be amazed. As the human race ascends, the deepest layers will naturally emerge from the zone of distress. The effacement of wretchedness will be effected by a simple elevation level."

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

"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 intersection being a junction, this point is a knot. Hence comes what is called the social tie."

"Those who do not weep, do not see."

"What a grand thing it is to be loved! What a far grander thing it is to love! The heart becomes heroic, by dint of passion."

"... plunged into chance,--that is to say, swallowed up in Providence."

"A library implies an act of faith which generations, still in darkness hid, sign in their night in witness of the dawn."

"He who contemplates the depths of Paris is seized with vertigo.Nothing is more fantastic. Nothing is more tragic.Nothing is more sublime."

"All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come."

"In all ThA©nardier's outpourings, the words and gestures, the fury blazing in his eyes, this explosion of an evil nature brazenly exposed, the mixture of bravado and abjectness, arrogance, pettiness, rage, absurdity; the hodgepodge of genuine distress, and lying sentiment, the shamelessness of a vicious man rejoicing in viciousness, the bare crudity of an ugly soul -- in this eruption of all suffering and hatred there was something which was hideous as evil itself and still as poignant as truth."

"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 been hurriedly stifled was stirring and fermenting. Sometimes the conscious of the honest man caught its breath, there was so much confusion in that air in which sophisms were mingled with truths. Minds trembled in the social anxiety like leaves at the approach of the storm. The electric tension was so great that at certain moments any chance-comer, thought unknown, flashed out. Then the twilight darkness fell again. At intervals, deep and sullen mutterings enabled men to judge of the amount of lightning in the cloud."