Les Misérables

by Victor Hugo

Claquesous had been such a villain that he might make a very good agent.

All the nuns in the world are not worth as much as one mother in the formation of a young girl's soul.

One hardly dares to say, nowadays, that two beings fell in love because they looked at each other. That is the way people do fall in love, nevertheless, and the only way. The rest is nothing, but the rest comes afterwards. Nothing is more real than these great shocks which two souls convey to each other by the exchange of that spark.

The wretchedness of a child interests a mother, the wretchedness of a young man interests a young girl, the wretchedness of an old man interests no one.

It has been calculated that the first day of a riot costs France twenty millions, the second day forty, the third sixty, a three days' uprising costs one hundred and twenty millions, that is to say, if only the financial result be taken into consideration, it is equivalent to a disaster, a shipwreck or a lost battle, which should annihilate a fleet of sixty ships of the line.

Oh my brothers, this is the point of junction, of those who think and of those who suffer;

"There are people who observe the rules of honor as one observes the stars, from a great distance."