222 quotes found
“The terrible shock of his sentence had in some way broken that wall which separates us from the mystery of things beyond and which we call life.”
“I repeat, whether we be Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns us all.”
“I have a dream my life would be. So different from this hell I'm living. So different now from what it seem. Now life has killed the dream I dreamed."*Fantine”
“Ever since history has been written, ever since philosophy has meditated, misery has been the garment of the human race.”
“Are you what is called a lucky man? Well, you are sad every day. Each day has its great grief or its little care...Hardly one day in a hundred of unbroken joy and sunshine. And you are of that smal...”
“Madame Thenardier was approaching her forties, which is equivalent to fifty in a woman...”
“Listen, Monsieur Director, here's what I think. Obviously this is wrong. There are twenty-six of you in five or six small rooms; there are three of us in space enough for sixty. That is wrong, I as...”
“I propose a toast to mirth; be merry! Let us complete our course of law by folly and eating! Indigestion and the digest. let Justinian be the male, and Feasting, the female! Joy the depths! Live, O...”
“Cosette, in her seclusion, like Marius in his, was all ready to take fire. Destiny, with its mysterious and fatal patience, was slowly bringing these two beings near each other, fully charged and a...”
“Monsieur, innocence is its own crown. Innocence has no truck with highness. It is as august in rags as it is draped in the fleur-de-lis.”
“. . .where there is no more hope, song remains.”
“... plunged into chance,--that is to say, swallowed up in Providence”
“The boughs, without becoming detached from the trunk grow away from it.”
“If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness. (Monseigneur Bienvenu in _Les Miserables_)”
“To study in Paris is to be born in Paris!”
“If you ask the great city, Who is this person?, she will answer, He is my child.”
“To breath the air of Paris preserves the soul.”
“To breathe Paris is to preserve one's soul.”
“To err his human, to stroll is Parisian.”
“Blacheville smiles with the self-satisfied smugness of a man whose vanity is tickled”
