Peace is the virtue of civilization. War is its crime.
What would be ugly in a garden constitutes beauty in a mountain.
To love beauty is to see light.
She talked thus, bent double, shaken with sobs, blinded by tears, her neck bare, clenching her hands, coughing with a dry and short cough, stammering very feebly with an agonised voice. Great grief is...
In all Thénardier'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, r...
I will weep with you over the children of kings, provided that you will weep with me over the children of the people
Equality, citizens, is not the whole of society on a level, a society of tall blades of grass and small oaks, or a number of entangled jealousies. It is, legally speaking, every aptitude having the sa...
Cities make ferocious men because they make corrupt men. The mountains, the sea, the forest, make savage men; they develop the fierce side, but often without destroying the humane side.
Be like the bird that passing on her flight awhile on boughs too slight feels them give way beneath her and yet sings knowing that she hath wings.
His ideas assumed a kind of stupefied and mechanical quality which is peculiar to despair.
A criminal remains a criminal whether he uses a convict's suit or a monarch's crown.
There are fathers who do not love their children there is no grandfather who does not adore his grandson.
Where would the shout of love begin, if not from the summit of sacrifice? Oh my brothers, this is the junction between those who think and those who suffer; this barricade is made neither of paving st...
We are unjust towards these great men who attempt the future, when they fail.
The shadow of the passions of the moment transversed this grand and gentle spirit occupied with eternal things.
The need of the immaterial is the most deeply rooted of all needs. One must have bread; but before bread, one must have the ideal.
The most beautiful of altars, he said, is the soul of an unhappy creature consoled and thankfing God.
The best minds have their soft spots and sometimes feel somewhat bruised by the scant respect of logic.
Never had the sky been more studded with stars and more charming, the trees more trembling, the odor of the grass more penetrating; never had the birds fallen asleep among the leaves with a sweeter no...
L’homme a sur lui la chair, qui est tout à la fois son fardeau et sa tentation. Il la traîne et lui cède.