God must not be judged from appearances. Beneath the gilding of heaven I perceive a poverty-stricken universe. Creation is bankrupt.
That I may carry on what I have begun, that I may do good, that I may be one day a grand and encouraging example that it may be said that there was finally some little happiness resulting from this suffering which I have undergone and this virtue to which I have returned!
She found him insipid, silly, stupid, useless, conceited, offensive, impertinent – and extremely ugly. The.
Each region of Paris is celebrated for the interesting treasures which are to be found there. There are ear-wigs in the timber-yards of the Ursulines, there are millepeds in the Pantheon, there are tadpoles in the ditches of the Champs-de-Mars.
His ideas assumed a kind of stupefied and mechanical quality which is peculiar to despair.
Why was that fore-carriage of a truck in that place in the street? In the first place, to encumber the street; next, in order that it might finish the process of rusting. There is a throng of institutions in the old social order, which one comes across in this fashion as one walks about outdoors, and which have no other reasons for existence than the above.
All the invasions of history have been determined by petticoats.
What was it but a figure of darkness whose sole care had been to safeguard the rising of a star. And that was Jean Valjean’s secret.
You always have everything better than the rest, even pain.
He sauntered. To stray is human. To saunter is Parisian. In.
The light of nature was ignited in him. Unhappiness, which also possesses a clearness of vision of its own, augmented the small amount of daylight which existed in this mind.
Innocence wears its own crown, Monsieur; it needs no added dignity; it is as sublime in rags as in royal robes.
Thought is the toil of the intelligence, revery its voluptuousness. To replace thought with revery is to confound a poison with a food.
A cloud has been collecting for 1500 years, yet you are condemning the thunderclap. Its wrath will be absolved by the future. Its result is a better world; and a caress for the human race issues from its most terrible blows. The human race has been chastised, but it has moved onward.
In this nineteenth century, the religious idea is undergoing a crisis. People are unlearning certain things, and they do well, provided that, while unlearning them they learn this: There is no vacuum in the human heart. Certain demolitions take place, and it is well that they do, but on condition that they are followed by reconstructions.
In this nineteenth century, the religious idea is undergoing a crisis. People are unlearning certain things, and they do well, provided that, while unlearning them they learn this: There is no vacuum in the human heart. Certain.
The counterfeits of the past assume false names, and gladly call themselves the future.
History neglects nearly all these particulars, and cannot do otherwise; the infinity would overwhelm it. Nevertheless, these details, which are wrongly called trivial, – there are no trivial facts in humanity, nor little leaves in vegetation, – are useful.
Is it not the best pity, when a man has a sore point, not to touch it at all?
The poacher lives in the forest, the smuggler lives in the mountains or on the sea. The cities make ferocious men because they make corrupt men. The mountain, the sea, the forest, make savage men; they develop the fierce side, but often without destroying the humane side.