Les Misérables

by Victor Hugo

Whether true or false, what is said about men often has as much influence on their lives, and particularly on their destinies, as what they

where many tongues talk but few heads think.

The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.”

It’s wrong to be so absorbed in divine law as not to perceive human law.

Look steadfastly and you will see the living glory of your beloved dead in the heights of heaven.”

“The spirit is a garden,”

Prejudices are the real robbers; vices the real murderers.

Just imagine, the door is never locked. Whoever enters is immediately my brother’s guest. He is afraid of nothing, not even at night; he says it is his form of bravery.

There is always One

with us who is the strongest. Satan may visit our house, but the good Lord lives here.

His universal tenderness was less an instinct of nature than the result of a strong conviction filtered through life into his heart, slowly dropping into him, thought by thought; for a character, as well as a rock, may have holes worn into it by drops of water. Such marks are ineffaceable; such formations are indestructible.

Monseigneur Bienvenu had what people call “a handsome air,” but so benevolent that you forgot it.

He did not study God; he was dazzled by Him.

What more do you need? A little garden to walk in, and immensity to reflect on. At his feet something to cultivate and gather; above his head something to study and meditate on; a few flowers on earth and all the stars in heaven.

The bishop, who was sitting beside him, touched his hand gently and said, “You didn’t have to tell me who you are. This is not my house; it is Christ’s. It does not ask any guest his name but whether he has an affliction. You are suffering; you are hungry and thirsty; you are welcome. And don’t thank me; don’t tell me that I am taking you into my house. This is the home of no man, except the one who needs a refuge. I tell you, a traveler, you are more at home here than I; whatever is here is yours. Why would I have to know your name? Besides, before you told me, I knew it.” The man opened his eyes in surprise. “Really? You knew my name?” “Yes,” answered the bishop, “your name is my brother.”

But listen, there will be more joy in heaven over the tears of a repentant sinner than over the white robes of a hundred just men.

Where that heart had been wounded, there was a scar. That was all.

but a man never feels outraged unless in some respect he is fundamentally right.

As the uproar of the demons receded, one would have said, it was a choir of angels approaching in the shadows.

There are moments when hideous possibilities besiege us like a throng of furies and break down the doors of our brain. When those we love are in danger, our solicitude invents all sorts of follies.

At that age, the countenance tells everything at once. Speech is unnecessary. Of some young men we might say that their faces are talkative. They look at one another, they know one another.

Strong and rare natures are created this way; misery, almost always a stepmother, is sometimes a mother; privation gives birth to power of soul and mind; distress is the nurse of self-respect;

misfortune gives good milk for great souls.

Properly speaking, he no longer held opinions; he had sympathies. To what party did he belong? To the party of humanity. Among humanities he chose France; within the nation he chose the people; of the people he chose woman. His pity went out to her above all. He now preferred an idea to a fact, a poet to a hero, and he admired a book like Job still more than an event like Marengo. And then when returning at night along the boulevards after a day of meditation he saw through the branches of the trees the fathomless space, the nameless lights, the depths, the darkness, the mystery, everything that is only human seemed very petty.

The woman whom he now saw was a noble, beautiful creature, with all the most bewitching feminine outlines at the precise moment when they are still combined with all the most charming graces of childhood—that pure and fleeting moment that can only be translated by these two words: sweet fifteen. Beautiful chestnut hair shaded with veins of gold, a brow that seemed marble, cheeks like roses, a pale bloom, a flushed whiteness, an exquisite mouth that gave off a smile like

a gleam of sunshine and a voice like music, a head that Raphael would have given to Mary, on a neck that Jean Goujon would have given to Venus. And so nothing be lacking to this ravishing form, the nose was not beautiful, it was pretty; neither straight nor curved, neither Italian nor Greek; it was the Parisian nose; that is, something sprightly, fine, irregular, and pure, the despair of painters and the charm of poets.

There is a moment when girls bloom in a twinkling, and become roses all at once. Yesterday we left them children, today we find them disturbing.

She had not only grown; she had become idealized. As three April days are enough for certain trees to put on a covering of flowers, six months had been enough for her to put on a mantle of beauty. Her April had come.

He trembled. The halo was coming straight toward him.

“O dear!” he thought, “I’ll never have time to make myself look natural.” Meanwhile, the man with the white

seemed to him that she was reproaching him for having taken so long without coming to her, and that she was saying, “I am the one coming to you.” Marius was bewildered by the eyes full of flashing light and fathomless abysses.

He felt as though his brain were on fire. She had come to him, what joy! And then, how she had looked at him! She seemed more beautiful than ever before. Beautiful with a beauty that combined all of the woman with all of the angel, a beauty that would have made Petrarch sing and Dante kneel. He felt as though he were swimming in the deep blue sky. At the same time he was horribly disconcerted, because there was dust on his boots.

He

felt sure that she had seen his boots in ...

It was She. Whoever has loved knows all the radiant meaning contained in the three letters of this word “she.” It certainly was she. Marius could hardly discern her through the luminous vapor that suddenly spread over his eyes. It was that sweet absent being, the star that had been his light for six months, it was the eye, the brow, the mouth, the beautiful vanished face that had brought him night by going away. The vision had been in an eclipse, it was reappearing.

O simplicity of the old, profundity of the young!

Meanwhile Cosette was still walled in behind her apparent unconcern and her imperturbable tranquility, so that Jean Valjean came to this conclusion: “This booby is madly in love with Cosette, but Cosette doesn’t even know he exists!” There was nevertheless a pang in his heart. The instant when Cosette would fall in love might come at any moment. Doesn’t everything begin by indifference?

One evening in this same month of April, Jean Valjean had gone out; after sunset Cosette had sat down on the bench. The wind was freshening in the trees, Cosette was musing; a vague sadness was coming over her little by little, that invincible sadness brought on by evening which comes perhaps, who knows, from the mystery of the tomb half-opened at that hour.

Perhaps Fantine was in that shadow.

At sunrise—the peculiarity of sunrise is to make us laugh at all our night terrors, and our laughter is always proportioned to the fear we have had—

A HEART BENEATH A STONE The reduction of the universe to a single being, the expansion of a single being into God, this is love. Love is the salutation of the angel to the stars.

How sad the soul when it is sad from love!

One glimpse of a smile under a white crepe hat with lilac veil is enough for the soul to enter the palace of dreams. God is behind everything, but everything hides God. Things are black, creatures are opaque. To love a human being is to make her transparent. Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.

Separated lovers belie absence by a thousand chimeric things that have their own reality. They are prevented from seeing each other, they cannot write to each other; they find a host of mysterious ways to correspond. They exchange the song of the birds, the perfume of flowers, children’s laughter, sunlight, the sighs of the wind, the starlight, the whole of creation. And

why not? All of God’s works were made to serve love. Love is powerful enough to charge al...

O Spring! You are a letter that I ...

The future belongs still more to the heart than the mind. To love is the only thing that can occupy and fill up eternity. The ...

It is a point of fire within us, which is immortal and infinite, which nothing can limit and nothing can extinguish. We feel it burning even in the marrow of our bones, and we see it radiate even to the depths of the sky.

Light of two minds that understand each other, of two hearts interchanged, of two glances that interpenetrate!

God can add nothing to the happiness of those who love one another, but to give them unending duration.