222 quotes found
“Nothing is more imminent than the impossible . . . what we must always foresee is the unforeseen.”
“Let us admit, without bitterness, that the individual has his distinct interests and can, without felony, stipulate for those interests and defend them. The present has its pardonable amount of ego...”
“France bleeds, but liberty smiles, and before the smile of liberty, France forgets her wound.”
“Cosette, by learning that she was beautiful, lost the grace of not knowing it; an exquisite grace, for beauty heightened by artlessness is ineffable, and nothing is so adorable as dazzling innocenc...”
“The soul of the just contemplates in sleep a mysterious heaven.”
“When your day has been teeming with different sensations, when you have things on your mind, you can get to sleep to start with but you can't get back to sleep. Sleep comes a lot more easily than i...”
“He had to accept the fate of every newcomer to a small town where there are plenty of tongues that gossip and few minds that think.”
“. . . for men felt therein the presence of that great human thing which is called law, and that great divine thing which is called justice.”
“The true division of humanity is this: the luminous and the dark.To diminish the number of the dark, to increase the number of the luminous, there is the aim.That is why we cry: education, knowledg...”
“Intellectual and moral growth is no less indispensable than material amelioration...If three is anything more poignant than a body agonizing for want of bread, it is a soul dying of hunger for light.”
“Because things are not agreeable," said Jean Valjean, "that is no reason for being unjust towards God.”
“Without knowing it, Javert in his awful happiness was deserving of pity, like every ignorant man who triumphs. Nothing could have been more poignant or more heartrending than that countenance on wh...”
“Isn't there in every human soul...an initial spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this world, immortal in the next, that good can bring out, prime, ignite, set on fire and cause to blaze splen...”
“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 y...”
“Curiosity is gluttony. To see is to devour.”
“Sin as little as possible-that is the law of mankind. Not to sin at all is the dream of the angel. All earthly things are subject to sin. Sin is like gravity.”
“To be a saint is to be an exception; to be a true man is the rule. Err, fail, sin if you must, but be upright. To sin as little as possible is the law for men; to sin not at all is a dream for ange...”
“Something more terrible than a hell where one suffers may be imagined, and that is a hell where one is bored.”
“This is one of those rare moments when, while doing that which it is one's duty to do, one feels something which disconcerts one, and which would dissuade one from proceeding further; one persists,...”
“Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.”
