As we have seen, prayer, celebration of the religious offices, alms, consoling the afflicted, the cultivation of a little piece of ground, fraternity, frugality, hospitality, self-sacrifice, confidenc...
As long as there are misérables there will be a cloud on the horizon that can become a phantom and a phantom that can become Marat.
Another story must begin!
Animals are nothing else than the figures of our virtues and our vices, straying before our eyes, the visible phantoms of our souls. God shows them to us in order to induce us to reflect. Only
And if you wish to receive of the ancient city an impression with which the modern one can no longer furnish you, climb--on the morning of some grand festival, beneath the rising sun of Easter or of P...
Ah! indeed he must not be mounted. It does not suit his ideas to be a saddle-horse. Every one has his ambition. 'Draw? Yes. Carry? No.' We must suppose that is what he said to himself.
Ah! There you are! he exclaimed, looking at Jean Valjean. I'm so glad to see you. Well, but how is this? I gave you the candlesticks too, which are of silver like the rest, and for which you can certa...
After the dazzling orgies in form and color of the eighteenth century, art was put on a diet, and allowed nothing but the straight line. This sort of progress ended in ugliness. Art reduced to a skele...
A strange thing has happened, do you know? I am in darkness. There is a person who, departing, took away the sun.
A smile is the same as sunshine; it banishes winter from the human countenance.
A room where one merely goes to bed costs twenty sous but a room where one retires may cost twenty francs.
A little garden in which to walk, and immensity in which to dream. At one's feet that which can be cultivated and plucked; over head that which one can study and meditate upon: some flowers on earth a...
A hundred francs, thought Fantine. But in what trade can one earn a hundred sous a day? Come! said she, let us sell what is left. The unfortunate girl became a woman of the town.
A forza d'uscire per recarsi a sognare, viene il giorno in cui si esce per andarsi ad annegare.
A flower should smell sweet, and a woman should have wit.
A doll is among the most pressing needs as well as the most charming instincts of feminine childhood. To care for it, adorn it, dress and undress it, give it lessons, scold it a little, put it to bed...
A certain amount of dreaming is good, like a narcotic in discreet doses. It lulls to sleep the fevers of the mind at labor, which are sometimes severe, and produces in the spirit a soft and fresh vapo...
A bird alone could have extricated himself from that place.
A benevolent malefactor, merciful, gentle, helpful, clement, a convict, returning good for evil, giving back pardon for hatred, preferring pity to vengeance, preferring to ruin himself rather than to...
A beautiful woman is a casus belli; a pretty woman is flagrant misdemeanour. All the invasions of history have been determined by petticoats.