Les Misérables

by Victor Hugo

The guilty one is not the person who has committed the sin, but the person who has created the shadow."

"The most beautiful of altars," he said, "is the soul of an unhappy creature consoled and thanking God."

Let us confine ourselves to prayer, when we think that a danger is approaching us. Let us pray, not for ourselves, but that our brother may not fall into sin on our account."

What the deuce!

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. One must eat or be eaten. I shall eat. It is better to be the tooth than the grass. Such is my wisdom.

People who are crushed do not look behind them. They know but too well the evil fate which follows them.

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."

When the heart is dry, the eye is dry.

Did a voice whisper in his ear that he had just passed the solemn hour of his destiny; that there no longer remained a middle course for him; that if he were not henceforth the best of men, he would be the worst; that it behooved him now, so to speak, to mount higher than the Bishop, or fall lower than the convict; that if he wished to become good be must become an angel; that if he wished to remain evil, he must become a monster?

The future life, the possible life which offered itself to him henceforth, all pure and radiant, filled him with tremors and anxiety. He no longer knew where he really was. Like an owl, who should suddenly see the sun rise, the convict had been dazzled and blinded, as it were, by virtue.

This, ladies, which you are drinking with so tranquil an air is Madeira wine,

The arms of mothers are made of tenderness; in them children sleep profoundly.

A person who is seated instead of standing erect—destinies hang upon such a thing as that.

The grave-digger's business becomes a subject for laughter when performed by a child.

books are cold but safe friends.

"Remember this, my friends: there are no such things as bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators."

The happiness of the evil-minded is black.

She no longer avoids anything. Let all the clouds fall upon her, and all the ocean sweep over her! What matters it to her? She is a sponge that is soaked.

Alas! What are all these fates, driven on pell-mell? Whither are they going? Why are they thus? He who knows that sees the whole of the shadow. He is alone. His name is God.

If you had seen the beginning, you would have seen.

While I was leading a bad life, I should not have liked to have my Cosette with me; I could not have borne her sad, astonished eyes.

Carve as we will the mysterious block of which our life is made, the black vein of destiny constantly reappears in it.

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

There was not a single spider's web, not a grain of dust, on the glass window of that conscience.

There is a spectacle more grand than the sea; it is heaven: there is a spectacle more grand than heaven; it is the inmost recesses of the soul.

Penetrate, at certain hours, past the livid face of a human being who is engaged in reflection, and look behind, gaze into that soul, gaze into that obscurity. There, beneath that external silence, battles of giants, like those recorded in Homer, are in progress; skirmishes of dragons and hydras and swarms of phantoms, as in Milton; visionary circles, as in Dante. What a solemn thing is this infinity which every man bears within him, and which he measures with despair against the caprices of his brain and the actions of his life!

One can no more prevent thought from recurring to an idea than one can the sea from returning to the shore: the sailor calls it the tide; the guilty man calls it remorse; God upheaves the soul as he does the ocean.

to allow this error of fate and of men to be carried out, not to hinder it, to lend himself to it through his silence, to do nothing, in short, was to do everything!

"Should he remain in paradise and become a demon? Should he return to hell and become an angel?"

No human sentiment can be as terrible as joy.