He set out for Toulon. He arrived there, after a journey of twenty-seven days, on a cart, with a chain on his neck. At Toulon he was clothed in the red cassock. All that had constituted his life, even to his name, was effaced; he was no longer even Jean Valjean; he was number 24,601.
In spring, sad souls grow light, as light falls into cellars at midday.
There is a spectacle more grand than the sea; it is heaven: there is a spectacle more grand than heaven; it is the inmost recesses of the soul.
He was at that period of life when the mind of men who think is composed, in nearly equal parts, of depth and ingenuousness. A grave situation being given, he had all that is required to be stupid: one more turn of the key, and he might be sublime.
What a contemplation for the mind, and what endless food for thought, is the reverberation of God upon the human wall!
There is not a metaphor, not an analogy, in slang, which does not contain a lesson.
There are birds in the clouds, just as there are angels above human distresses; but what can they do for him? They sing and fly and float, and he, he rattles in the death agony.
In the case of sand as in that of woman, there is a fineness which is treacherous.
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.
Something new was entering his soul. Jean Valjean had never loved anything... But, as he was fifty-five and Cosette was only eight, all the love he might have felt through his whole life melted into a sort of ineffable glow. This was the second white vision he had met. The bishop had caused the dawn of virtue on his horizon; Cosette had invoked the dawn of love.
He was full of sly caution and clumsy recklessness. He.
In thought there always exists a certain amount of internal rebellion;.
We only love the fray so long as there is danger, and in any case, the combatants of the first hour have alone the right to be the exterminators of the last. He who has not been a stubborn accuser in prosperity should hold his peace in the face of ruin.
I do not know whether it will be read by all, but I wrote it for all.
Now, there’s a young man who looks like a real pedant, for you!
But you are good-natured princes, and you do not think it a bad thing that belief in the good God should constitute the philosophy of the people, very much as the goose stuffed with chestnuts is the truffled turkey of the poor.” CHAPTER.
Death belongs only to God. What right have men to lay hands on a thing so unknown?
A little girl without a doll is almost as unhappy, and quite as impossible, as a woman without children.
There is one thing sadder than to see one’s children die; it is to see them leading an evil life.
I buoni pensieri hanno i loro abissi al pari dei cattivi.