Don't you recognize me?''No.''Eponine.'Marius bent hastily forward and saw that it was indeed that unhappy girl, clad in a man's clothes.'How do you come to be here? What are you doing?''I'm dying,' s...
Does it serve any purpose to ungild the crown of Louis XIV, to scrape the coat of arms of Henry IV? We scoff at M. de Vaublanc for erasing the N’s from the bridge of Jena! What was it that he did? Wha...
Do not ask the name of the person who asks you for a bed for the night. He whose name is a burden to him needs shelter more than anyone.
Did I exist before my birth? No. Shall I exist after death? No. What am I? A little dust collected in an organism. What am I to do on this earth? The choice rests with me: suffer or enjoy. Whither wil...
Cossette, al saber que era hermosa, perdió la gracia de ignorarlo; gracia exquisita, porque la belleza realzada por la sencillez es inefable, y no hay nada más digno de adoración que una inocencia des...
Certainly we talk to ourselves; there is no thinking being who has not experienced that. One could even say that the word is never a more magnificent mystery than when, within a man, it travels from h...
But what was tragic about the girl was that she had not been born ugly. She might even have been a pretty child, and the grace proper to her age was still at odds with the repulsive premature aging in...
But that which pleases us in people who are rising pleases us less in the case of people who are falling.
But let those who do not desire a future reflect on this matter. When they say no to progress, it is not the future but themselves that they are condemning. They are giving themselves a sad malady; th...
Besides, to be fair to him, his viciousness was perhaps not innate. From his earliest steps among men he had felt, then seen himself the object of jeers, condemnation, rejection. Human speech for him...
Because things are unpleasant, said Jean Valjean, that is no reason for being unjust toward God.
At the hour of civilization through which we are now passing, and which is still so sombre, the miserable's name is Man; he is agonizing in all climes, and he is groaning in all languages.
At the end of life death is a departure; but at life's beginning a departure is death.
As long as social damnation exists, through law and customs, artificially creating hell at the heart of civilization and muddying the a destiny that is divine with human calamity; as long as these thr...
And, moreover, when it happens that both are sincere and good, nothing will mix and amalgamate more easily than an old priest and an old soldier. In reality, they are the same kind of man. One has dev...
And confronting these men, wild and terrible as we agree that they were, there were men of quite another kind, smiling and adorned with ribbons and stars, silk stockinged, yellow gloved and with polis...
Am I not as much a doctor as they? I too have my patients; in the first place, theirs, whom they call sick; and then my own, whom I call unfortunate.
All history is nothing but wearisome repetition. One century is the plagiarist of the other.
All has happened to her that will happen to her. She has felt everything, borne everything, experienced everything, suffered everything, lost everything, mourned everything. She is resigned, with that...
Aimer ou avoir aimée, cela suffit. Ne demandez rien ensuite. On n'a pas d'autre perle à trouver dans les plis ténébreux de la vie. Aimer est un accomplissement.