Les Misérables

by Victor Hugo

“Have no fear of robbers or murderers. Such dangers are without, and are but petty. We should fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices the real murderers. The great dangers are within us. What matters it what threatens our heads or our purses? Let us think only of what threatens our souls.”

There is always One with us who is the strongest: Satan may visit our house, but the good God inhabits it.

That tyrant has begotten royalty, which is authority springing from the False, while science is authority springing from the True. Man should be governed by science.”

“And conscience,” added the bishop.

“The same thing: conscience is innate knowledg...

To destroy abuses is not enough; habits must be changed. The windmill has gone, but the Wind is there yet.”

“You have demolished. To demolish may be useful, but I distrust a demolition effected in anger!”

“Oh, Monsieur Priest! you do not love the harshness of the truth, but Christ loved it.

innocence is its own crown!

I will weep for the children of kings with you, if you will weep with me for the little ones of the people.”

The best men have their fetishes, and sometimes they feel almost crushed at the little respect that logic shows them.

“Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over, this is recognised: that the human race has been harshly treated, but that it has advanced.”

“Luckily those who despise it in a bonnet, venerate it in a hat.”

We must say, by the way, that the hatred of luxury is not an intelligent hatred. It implies a hatred of the arts.

We do not admire the combat when there is no danger, and in any case, the combatants of the first hour have alone the right to be the exterminators in the last.

Who knows how easily ambition disguises itself under the name of a calling, possibly in good faith, and deceiving itself, saint that it is!

To the mass, success has almost the same appearance as supremacy. Success, that pretender to talent, has a dupe,—history.

They confound the radiance of the stars of heaven with the radiations which a duck’s foot leaves in the mud.

We think it our duty to notice that, outside of and, so to say, beyond his faith, the bishop had an excess of love. It is on that account, quia multum amavit, that he was deemed vulnerable by “serious men,” “sober persons,” and “reasonable people;” favourite phrases in our sad world, where egotism receives its key-note from pedantry. What was this excess of love?

His universal tenderness was less an instinct of nature than the result of a strong conviction filtered through life into his heart, slowly dropping in upon him, thought by thought; for a character, as well as a rock, may be worn into by drops of water.

Respect, unutterable respect, penetrated you by degrees, and made its way to your heart; and you felt that you had before you one of those strong, tried, and indulgent souls, where the thought is so great that it cannot be other than gentle.

He was there alone with himself, collected, tranquil, adoring, comparing the serenity of his heart with the serenity of the skies, moved in the darkness by the visible splendours of the constellations, and the invisible splendour of God, opening his soul to the thoughts which fall from the Unknown.

In such moments, offering up his heart at the hour when the flowers of night inhale their perfume, lighted like a lamp in the centre of the starry night, expanding his soul in ecstasy in the midst of the universal radiance of creation, he could not himself perhaps have told what was passing in his own mind; he felt something depart from him, and something descend upon him; mysterious interchanges of the depths of the soul with the depths of the universe.

Was not this narrow inclosure, with the sky for a background, enough to enable him to adore God in his most beautiful as well as in his most sublime works? Indeed, is not that all, and what more can be desired? A little garden to walk, and immensity to reflect upon. At his feet something to cultivate and gather; above his head something to study and meditate upon; a few flowers on the earth, and all the stars in the sky.

What enlightened this man was the heart. His wisdom was formed from the light that came thence.

he had nothing of the prophet and nothing of the magician. His humble soul loved; that was all.

There are men who labour for the extraction of gold; he worked for the extraction of pity. The misery of the universe was his mine. Grief everywhere was only an occasion for good always.

people overwhelmed with trouble do not look behind; they know only too well that misfortune follows them. He

There are moments when nature appears hostile.

She had been fore-ordained to meekness, but faith, charity, hope, these three virtues which gently warm the heart, had gradually sublimated this meekness into sanctity.

If you are leaving that sorrowful place with hate and anger against men, you are worthy of compassion; if you leave it with goodwill, gentleness, and peace, you are better than any of us.”

We must say, however, by the way, that there is yet a deep gulf between this race of men and the hideous assassin of the city. The poacher dwells in the forest, and the smuggler in the mountains or upon the sea; cities produce ferocious men, because they produce corrupt men; the mountains, the forest, and the sea, render men savage; they develop the fierce, but yet do not destroy the human.

The natural light was enkindled in him. Misfortune, which has also its illumination, added to the few rays that he had in his mind.

He had no weapon but his hate.

He felt that to increase his knowledge was to strengthen his hatred. Under certain circumstances, instruction and enlightenment may serve as rallying-points for evil.