Not seeing people permits one to attribute to them all possible perfections.
Moreover, and we must not forget this, interests which are not very friendly to the ideal and the sentimental are in the way. Somestimes the stomach paralyzes the heart.
Monsieur' to a convict is a glass of water to a man dying of thirst at sea; ignominy thirsts for respect.
Many men have a secret monster in this same manner, a dragon which gnaws them, a despair which inhabits their night. Such a man resembles other men, he goes and comes. No one knows that he bears withi...
Man has upon him his flesh, which is at once his burden and his temptation. He drags it with him and yields to it. He must watch it, cheek it, repress it, and obey it only at the last extremity. There...
Ma bouche n'avait pas dit une chose que deja ton coeur avait repondu.
M. Mabeuf’s political opinion was a passionate fondness for plants, and a still greater one for books. He had, like everybody else, his termination in ist, without which nobody could have lived in tho...
Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are the fields of battle which have their heroes; obscure heroes, who are, sometimes, grander than the heroes who win renown.
Let us remark by the way, that to be blind and to be loved, is, in fact, one of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness upon this earth, where nothing is complete. To have continually at one's...
Let us never fear robbers not murderers. Those are dangers from without, petty dangers. Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices are the real murderers. The great dangers lie with...
Knowing that she was beautiful, she felt thoroughly, although in an indistinct way, that she had a weapon. Women play with their beauty as children do with their knives. They would themselves with it.
Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. Itis your soul that I buy from you; I withdraw it from black thoughts andthe spirit of perdition, and I give it to God.
Jean Valjean watched these ravages with anxiety. He who felt that he could never do anything but crawl, walk at the most, beheld wings sprouting on Cosette.
It is an error to imagine that fate can be exhausted, and that one has reached the bottom of anything whatever.
It combined corrupt simplicity with delicate ferocity, a curious variety of civilization; a tiger with a simper.
In the neighborhood she was called the Lark. People like figurative names and were happy to give a nickname to this child, no larger than a bird, trembling, frightened, and shivering, first to wake ev...
If you are a stone, be adamant; if you are a plant, be the sensitive plant; if you are a man, be love.
I have just met Marius' new hat and new coat, with Marius inside them.
Here we stop. On the threshold of wedding nights stands an angel smiling, a finger to his lips.
He who is not master of his own thoughts is not accountable for his own deeds.