[He] had to submit to the fate of every newcomer in a small town, where many tongues talk but few heads think.
What greater flood can there be than the flood of ideas? How quickly they submerge all that they set out to destroy, how rapidly do they create terrifying depths?
One may, in a case of exigency, introduce the reader in to a nuptial chamber, not into a virginal chamber. Verse would hardly venture it, prose must not.It is the interior of a flower that is not yet...
He feels himself buried in those two infinities, the ocean and the sky, at one and the same time: the one is a tomb; the other is a shroud.
A week passed, and Jean Valjean had not taken a step in his room. He still remained in bed. The portress said to her husband:–The good man upstairs yonder does not get up, he no longer eats, he will n...
The scaffold is the accomplice of the executioner; it devours, it eats flesh, it drinks blood; the scaffold is a sort of monster fabricated by the judge and the carpenter, a spectre which seems to liv...
Joie est mon caractere,C'est la faute a Voltaire;Misere est mon trousseauC'est la faute a Rousseau.[Joy is my character,'Tis the fault of Voltaire;Misery is my trousseau
Vi sono cose che non si deve neppure tentare di dipingere: il sole è fra queste.
But secondly you say 'society must exact vengeance, and society must punish'. Wrong on both counts. Vengeance comes from the individual and punishment from God.
One does not cross-examine a saint.
Wisdom is a sacred communion.
Change your opinions, keep to your principles change your leaves, keep intact your roots.
We do not claim that the portrait we are making is the whole truth, only that it is a resemblance.
There are men who dig for gold; [Monseigneur Bienvenu] dug for compassion.
A certain amount of reverie is good, like a narcotic in discreet doses. It soothes the fever, occasionally high, of the brain at work, and produces in the mind a soft, fresh vapor that corrects the al...
You are adorable, mademoiselle. I study your feet with the microscope and your soul with the telescope.
So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate...
Passando fra gli insorti che si scostavano con religioso rispetto, [papà Mabeuf] continuò dritto verso Enjolras che indietreggiava impietrito, gli strappò la bandiera, e senza che nessuno osasse tratt...
Joy is the reflex of terror.
One might almost say that affinities begin with the letters of the alphabet. In that sequence, O and P are inseparable. You might just as well say O and P as Orestes and Pylades. A true satellite of E...