Les Misérables

by Victor Hugo

He was forbearing towards women and the poor on whom the burden of human society falls. He said, ‘The failings of women, children and servants, of the feeble, the destitute and the ignorant, are the fault of their husbands, fathers and masters, of the strong, the rich and the learned.’ He also said, ‘Teach those who are ignorant as much as you can. Society is to blame for not giving free education. It’s responsible for the darkness it produces. In any benighted soul – that’s where sin will be committed. It’s not he who commits the sin that’s to blame but he who causes the darkness to prevail.’ As we can see, he had his own peculiar way of judging things. I suspect he had taken it from the Gospels.

The phantom of social justice haunted him.

He was fond of saying, ‘There’s the bravery of the priest as well as the bravery of a colonel of dragoons. Only,’ he added, ‘ours must be a bravery of peace.’

And that evening before he went to bed he said, ‘Never fear robbers or murderers. Those are dangers that come from without. Small dangers. Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers. Vices are the real murderers. The great dangers are within us. Never mind what endangers our life or our purse! Let’s be mindful only of what endangers our soul.’

The senator we have spoken of earlier was a calculating man who had made his way regardless of all those obstacles he would have encountered that we call conscience, solemn oath, justice, duty. He had moved straight towards his goal without once faltering in the pursuit of his career and his self-interest.

This wouldn't help a person know which senator, specifically, one is talking about.

We live in a dismal society. Succeed – that is the lesson drip-dripping down from the corruption at the top.

In our day, a more or less official philosophy has joined its household staff, wears the livery of success, and runs its antechamber. Principle of success: prosperity implies capability. Win the lottery and you are a clever man. Whoever wins is respected. Be born lucky, that is all. If luck is yours, the rest will follow. Be fortunate and you will be thought great.

Such was the life of this good man. Sometimes he fell asleep in his garden and then he was as venerable as could be.

He felt for whatever suffers and expiates. The universe seemed to him an immense sickness. He was aware of fever everywhere, everywhere he heard the sound of suffering, and without seeking to understand the mystery he strove to dress the wound.

Reminds me of The Plague (Camus).

What exists was for this good and exceptional priest a permanent cause of a sorrow seeking to console. There are men who toil to extract gold. He toiled to extract pity.

The terms of the Penal Code were mandatory. There are in our civilization dread moments; these are the times when the ruling of the penal system spells perdition. What a fateful moment it is when society distances itself and irredeemably casts adrift a thinking being!

He wondered whether human society could possibly be entitled to inflict on its members both its unconscionable improvidence on the one hand and its ruthless providence on the other; and to trap a poor man for ever between want and excess, want of work and excess of punishment. Whether it was not outrageous that society should treat in this manner precisely those least favoured by the chance distribution of assets, and consequently those most deserving of care.

‘The state’s two most important servants are the woman at whose breast the child is nurtured and the schoolmaster.’

Incidentally, let us say that on this earth where nothing is perfect, to be blind and to be loved is in fact one of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness. To have continually at your side a wife, a daughter, a sister, a delightful human being who is there because you need her and because she cannot do without you, to know you are indispensable to a person who is necessary to you, to be able constantly to measure her affection by how much of her presence she grants you and to say to yourself, ‘Since she devotes all of her time to me, I must have all of her love’; to see the mind though you cannot see the face, to be able to count on the loyalty of one person when the world is eclipsed; to perceive in the rustle of a gown the fluttering of wings, to hear her to-ing and fro-ing, going out, coming home, talking, singing, and to think that you are at the centre of these footsteps, of this talking and singing; to demonstrate at every moment your own magnetic power, to feel all the more powerful the more infirm you are, to become in the darkness and by means of the darkness the star round which this angel gravitates – few joys equal this. The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that you are loved, loved for yourself, better still, loved despite yourself. This conviction the blind man has. In his plight, to be assisted is to be cherished. Does he lack anything? No. There is no loss of light in having love. And what love! A love that is all goodness. There is no b...

This cuts deep. It makes me feel like I must find a way to keep caring for my brother. Is there a way?

What is this story of Fantine about? It is about society buying a slave. From whom? From wretchedness. From hunger, cold, isolation, neglect, destitution. A hard bargain. A soul for a morsel of bread. Society accepts what wretchedness offers.

France is meant to stir the soul of nations, not to stifle it. Since 1792 all revolutions in Europe have been the French Revolution: liberty radiates from France. It is a solar phenomenon. None but the blind can fail to see it! Bonaparte said so.

Nothing oppresses the heart like symmetry. This is because symmetry is boredom, and boredom is the very foundation of grief. Despair yawns. It is possible to imagine something more terrible than a hell of suffering, and that is a hell of boredom.

We ourselves respect the past in certain instances and in all cases grant it clemency, provided it consents to being dead. If it insists on being alive, we attack and try to kill it.