Les Misérables

by Victor Hugo

“Monsieur” to a convict is a glass of water to a man dying of thirst at sea. Ignominy thirsts for respect.

“You need not tell me who you are. This is not my house; it is the house of Christ. It does not ask any comer whether he has a name, but whether he has an affliction. You are suffering; you are hungry and thirsty; be welcome. And do not thank me; do not tell me that I take you into my house. This is the home of no man, except him who needs an asylum. I tell you, who are a traveler, that you are more at home here than I; whatever is here is yours. What need have I to know your name? Besides, before you told me, I knew it.”

Alas! What he wanted to keep outdoors had entered; what he wanted to render blind was looking upon him. His conscience.

Probity, sincerity, candor, conviction, the idea of duty, are things which, mistaken, may become hideous, but which, even though hideous, remain great; their majesty, peculiar to the human conscience, continues in all their horror; they are virtues with a single vice—error. The pitiless, sincere joy of a fanatic in an act of atrocity preserves an indescribably mournful radiance which inspires us with veneration. Without suspecting it, Javert, in his fear-inspiring happiness, was pitiable, like every ignorant man who wins a triumph. Nothing could be more painful and terrible than this face, which revealed what we may call all the evil of good.

He would approach the bed where she slept, and would tremble there with delight; he felt inward yearnings, like a mother, and knew not what they were, for it is something very incomprehensible and very sweet, this grand and strange emotion of a heart in its first love.

This was the second white vision he had seen. The bishop had caused the dawn of virtue on his horizon; Cosette evoked the dawn of love.

Nature had placed a wide chasm—fifty years’ interval of age—between Jean Valjean and Cosette. This chasm fate filled up. Fate abruptly brought together, and wedded with its resistless power, these two shattered lives, dissimilar in years, but similar in sorrow. The one, indeed, was the complement of the other. The instinct of Cosette sought for a father, as the instinct of Jean Valjean sought for a child. To meet, was to find one another. In that mysterious moment, when their hands touched, they were welded together. When their two souls saw each other, they recognized that they were mutually needed, and they closely embraced.

They were separated by political opinions. Certainly I approve of political opinions, but there are people who do not know where to stop.

But we will eat you! But we will devour you, poor little things! Monsieur Millionaire!

Eat the rich lol

The poor man shuddered, overflowed with an angelic joy; he declared in his transport that this would last through life; he said to himself that he really had not suffered enough to deserve such radiant happiness, and he thanked God, in the depths of his soul, for having permitted that he, a miserable man, should be so loved by this innocent being.

You look at a star from two motives: because it is luminous and because it is impenetrable. You have at your side a softer radiance and a greater mystery: woman.

What a grand thing, to be loved! What a grander thing still, to love! The heart becomes heroic through

passion. It is no longer composed of anything but what is pure; it no longer rests upon anything but what is elevated and great. An unworthy thought can no more spring up in it than a nettle upon a glacier. The soul, lofty and serene, inaccessible to common passions and common emotions, rising above the clouds and the shadows of this world, its follies, its falsehoods, its hates, its vanities, its miseries, inhabits the blue of the skies, and only feels more the deep and subterranean commotions of destiny, as the summit of the mountains feels the quaking of the earth. Were there not someone who loved, the sun would be extinguished.

it? See, you are my angel, let me come sometimes; I believe I am going to die. If you but knew! I adore you! Pardon me, I am talking to you, I do not know what I am saying to you, perhaps I annoy you; do I annoy you?”

Oh Marius

Marius a baron! She did not comprehend. She did not know what that word meant. Marius was Marius.

He was less the transfigured than the victim of this miracle. He bore it, exasperated. He saw in it only an immense difficulty of existence. It seemed to him that henceforth his breathing would be oppressed for ever.

Love one another. Be foolish about it. Love is the foolishness of men and the wisdom of God. Adore each other. Only,”