A writer is a world trapped in a person.
The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real that we exist, it is by the ideal that we live.
One is not idle because one is absorbed. There is both visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil, to think is to do. The crossed arms work, the clasped hands act. The eyes upturned to Hea...
To rise from error to truth is rare and beautiful.
Nature has made a pebble and a female. The lapidary makes the diamond, and the lover makes the woman.
Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.
The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
Well, for us, in history where goodness is a rare pearl, he who was good almost takes precedence over he who was great.
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!
Автор цієї книжки не належить до тих, хто захоплюється війною. Жахливо приваблива в одних своїх проявах, вона огидно потворна в інших.
Where there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think.
Great events have incalculable results.
After philosophy, action is required;
You who are Prejudice, Abuse, Ignominy, Oppression, Iniquity, Despotism, Injustice, Fanaticism, beware of the wide-eyed urchin. He will grow up.
Without knowing it, Javert in his awful happiness was deserving of pity, like every ignorant man who triumphs. Nothing could have been more poignant or more heartrending than that countenance on which...
Whither will suffering lead me? To nothingness; but I shall have suffered. Whither will enjoyment lead me? To nothingness; but I shall have enjoyed myself.
We have both been talking about you. Cosette loves you so dearly! You must not forget that you have a chamber here, we want nothing more to do with the Rue de l'Homme Armé. We will have no more of it...
To see nothing of a person makes it possible to credit him with all the perfection.
To die is nothing, but it is terrible not to live.
There is M. Geborand purchasing paradise for a sou.