October, 1815, he was released; he had entered there in 1796, for having broken a pane of glass and taken a loaf of bread. Room
Nous ne sommes pas de ceux qui flattent la guerre; quand l'occasion s'en présente, nous lui disons ses vérités. La guerre a d'affreuses beautés que nous n'avons point cachées; elle a aussi, convenons-...
No one is more avidly curious about other people's doings than those persons whom they do not concern.
M. Myriel had to undergo the fate of every newcomer in a little town, where there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think. He was obliged to undergo it although he was a bishop, and...
Look down and show some mercy if you can. Look down, look down, upon your fellow man.
It's not enough to abolish abuse; custom must also be transformed. The mill was pulled down, but the wind still blows.
It is the property of grief to cause the childish side of man to reappear.
It is ourselves we have to fear. Prejudice is the real robber, and vice the real murderer.
In moments like these, offering up his heart at the hour that night flowers offer up their perfume, lit up like a lamp in the middle of the starry night, full of ecstasy in the middle of the universal...
In fact, when the scaffold is there, all erected and prepared, it has something about it which produces hallucination. One may feel a certain indifference to the death penalty, one may refrain from pr...
In becoming dirt, she has been turned to stone. To touch her is to feel a chill.
In 1804, M. Myriel was the Cure of B—— [Brignolles]. He was already advanced in years, and lived in a very retired manner.
I would rather be the head of a fly than the tail of a lion.
I think of winter, which is nothing but a rift in the firmament through which the winds break loose, the shreds of cloud over the hilltops in the new blue of the morning -- and dew-drops, those false...
I desire to forget life. Life is a hideous invention of I know not whom. It lasts no time at all, and is worth nothing. One breaks one's neck in living. Life is a theatre set in which there are but fe...
History neglects nearly all these particulars, and cannot do otherwise; the infinity would overwhelm it. Nevertheless, these details, which are wrongly called trivial,—there are no trivial facts in hu...
His universal compassion was due less to natural instinct, than to a profound conviction, a sum of thoughts that in the course of living had filtered through to his heart: for in the nature of man, as...
His tavern sign bore witness to his feats of arms. He had painted it himself, being a Jack-of-all-trades who did everything badly.
He returned the money with a graceful letter saying that he had found a means of livelihood which would supply him with all his needs. At the moment he had three francs in the world.
He did not seek to assume the mantle of Elijah, to shed a light of the future upon the misty turmoil of events or resolve the prevailing light into a single flame; there was in him nothing of the prop...