The book which the reader has under his eye at this moment is, from one end to the other, as a whole and in detail, whatever may be its intermittences, exceptions and faults, the march from evil to good, from the unjust to the just, from night to day, from appetite to conscience, from rottenness to life, from hell to heaven, from nothingness to God. Point of departure: matter; point of arrival: the soul. The hydra at the beginning, the angel at the end.
Do you permit it?” Enjolras.
Style is the form of the ideal; rhythm is its movement.
Without seeking to comprehend the incomprehensible, he gazed upon it. He did not study God; he was dazzled by Him.
Great grief contains dejection. They discourage existence.
It is the same with wretchedness as with everything else. It ends by becoming bearable.
Animals are nothing else than the figures of our virtues and our vices, straying before our eyes, the visible phantoms of our souls. God shows them to us in order to induce us to reflect. Only.
If there did not exist some one who loved, the sun would become extinct.
It was like a hand which had opened and thrown suddenly upon her a handful of sunbeams.
A person may not want any more of his cake; but that is no reason for giving it away.
Ignominy thirsts for consideration.
Be born with a silver spoon in your mouth! everything lies in that. Be lucky, and you will have all the rest; be happy, and people will think you great.
Il visitait les pauvres tant qu’il avait de l’argent; quand il n’en avait plus, il visitait les riches.
The wretchedness of a child interests a mother, the wretchedness of a young man interests a young girl, the wretchedness of an old man interests no one.
It is one of the poignant anxieties of the thinker that he sees the shadow resting on the human soul, and that he gropes in darkness without being able to awaken that slumbering Progress.
Il crepuscolo piace solo ai pipistrelli.
There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
All the nuns in the world are not worth as much as one mother in the formation of a young girl’s soul.
The devotion of one man had given strength and courage to all.
To confide is sometime to deliver into a person’s power.