Les Misérables

by Victor Hugo

The beautiful is as useful as the useful." He added after a pause, "More so, perhaps."

"Let us never fear robbers nor murderers. Those are dangers from without, petty dangers. Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices are the real murderers. The great dangers lie within ourselves. What matters it what threatens our head or our purse! Let us think only of that which threatens our soul."

Did I exist before my birth? No. Shall I exist after death? No. What am I? A little dust collected in an organism. What am I to do on this earth? The choice rests with me: suffer or enjoy. Whither will suffering lead me? To nothingness; but I shall have suffered. Whither will enjoyment lead me? To nothingness; but I shall have enjoyed myself. My choice is made.

Beyond the tomb there is nothing but equal nothingness.

What does it matter, after all? Dying is a simple affair. One has no need of the light for that. So be it. I shall die by starlight."

I will weep with you over the children of kings, provided that you will weep with me over the children of the people." "I weep for all," said the Bishop. "Equally!" exclaimed conventionary G——; "and if the balance must incline, let it be on the side of the people. They have been suffering longer."

The point which we consider it our duty to note is, that outside of and beyond his faith, as it were, the Bishop possessed an excess of love. In was in that quarter, quia multum amavit,—because he loved much—that he was regarded as vulnerable by "serious men," "grave persons" and "reasonable people";

There are men who toil at extracting gold; he toiled at the extraction of pity. Universal misery was his mine. The sadness which reigned everywhere was but an excuse for unfailing kindness. Love each other; he declared this to be complete, desired nothing further, and that was the whole of his doctrine.

"Just survey the spectacle of the world: all war against all; the strongest has the most wit. Your love each other is nonsense."—"Well," replied Monseigneur Welcome, without contesting the point, "if it is nonsense, the soul should shut itself up in it, as the pearl in the oyster."

There will be more joy in heaven over the tear-bathed face of a repentant sinner than over the white robes of a hundred just men. If you emerge from that sad place with thoughts of hatred and of wrath against mankind, you are deserving of pity; if you emerge with thoughts of good-will and of peace, you are more worthy than any one of us."

Liberation is not deliverance. One gets free from the galleys, but not from the sentence.

He always took his meals alone, with an open book before him, which he read. He had a well-selected little library. He loved books; books are cold but safe friends.

With the exercise of a little care, the nettle could be made useful; it is neglected and it becomes hurtful. It is exterminated. How many men resemble the nettle!" He added, after a pause: "Remember this, my friends: there are no such things as bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators."

I shall gaze at her; it will do me good to see that innocent creature. She knows nothing at all. She is an angel, you see, my sisters. At that age the wings have not fallen off."

Good God! it is very easy to be kind; the difficulty lies in being just.

She was so gentle that she appeared fragile; but she was more solid than granite.

he treated destiny as his equal: he seemed to say to fate, Thou wilt not dare.

If you wish to gain an idea of what revolution is, call it Progress; and if you wish to acquire an idea of the nature of progress, call it To-morrow.

Hope in a child who has never known anything but despair is a sweet and touching thing.

All at once she exclaimed, "How pretty it is here!" It was a frightful hole, but she felt free.

He loved and grew strong again.

There is no such thing as nothingness. Zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing.

A faith; this is a necessity for man. Woe to him who believes nothing.

To contemplate is to labor, to think is to act.

Cosette's face had even undergone a change, to a certain extent. The gloom had disappeared from it. A smile is the same as sunshine; it banishes winter from the human countenance.

Whoever you may be, if your name is Prejudice, Abuse, Ignorance, Oppression, Iniquity, Despotism, Injustice, Fanaticism, Tyranny, beware of the gaping gamin. The little fellow will grow up.

suffering and toil are the two faces of man.

He was one of those children most deserving of pity, among all, one of those who have father and mother, and who are orphans nevertheless.

Enjolras was a charming young man, who was capable of being terrible.

He hardly saw the roses, he ignored spring, he did not hear the carolling of the birds; the bare throat of Evadne would have moved him no more than it would have moved Aristogeiton; he, like Harmodius, thought flowers good for nothing except to conceal the sword.

A sceptic who adheres to a believer is as simple as the law of complementary colors. That which we lack attracts us. No one loves the light like the blind man.

As he wished always to appear in mourning, he clothed himself with the night.

It is the same with wretchedness as with everything else. It ends by becoming bearable.

M. Mabeuf's political opinion consisted in a passionate love for plants, and, above all, for books. Like all the rest of the world, he possessed the termination in ist, without which no one could exist at that time, but he was neither a Royalist, a Bonapartist, a Chartist, an Orleanist, nor an Anarchist; he was a bouquinist, a collector of old books.

He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often returned with two.

He thought incessantly, for he could not do otherwise; but he no longer took pleasure in his thoughts. To everything that they proposed to him in a whisper, he replied in his darkness: "What is the use?"

"Are you good for anything?" "I have a vague ambition in that direction," said Grantaire. "You do not believe in everything." "I believe in you."

The tiniest worm is of importance; the great is little, the little is great; everything is balanced in necessity; alarming vision for the mind.

She loved with all the more passion because she loved ignorantly. She did not know whether it was a good thing or a bad thing, useful or dangerous, eternal or temporary, allowable or prohibited; she loved.

Moreover, Cosette was not very timid by nature. There flowed in her veins some of the blood of the bohemian and the adventuress who runs barefoot. It will be remembered that she was more of a lark than a dove. There was a foundation of wildness and bravery in her.

The reduction of the universe to a single being, the expansion of a single being even to God, that is love.

How sad is the soul, when it is sad through love!

The future belongs to hearts even more than it does to minds. Love, that is the only thing that can occupy and fill eternity.

Ye who suffer because ye love, love yet more. To die of love, is to live in it.

If there did not exist some one who loved, the sun would become extinct.

"So you have neither father nor mother?" resumed Gavroche majestically. "Excuse us, sir, we have a papa and a mamma, but we don't know where they are." "Sometimes that's better than knowing where they are," said Gavroche, who was a thinker.

Of all the things that God has made, the human heart is the one which sheds the most light, alas! and the most darkness.

Sometimes, beautiful as Cosette was, Marius shut his eyes in her presence. The best way to look at the soul is through closed eyes.

"As you like, but you shall not enter here. I'm not the daughter of a dog, since I'm the daughter of a wolf. There are six of you, what matters that to me? You are men. Well, I'm a woman. You don't frighten me.

Aren't they ridiculous, these ninnies of men, to think they can scare a girl!