Les Misérables

by Victor Hugo

She was advised to see the mayor; she did not dare. The mayor had given her fifty francs because he was good, and had dismissed her because he was just. She bowed before the decision.

The provincial dandy wore the longest of spurs and the fiercest of mustaches.

redoubtable

PERSPICACITY

fecundated,

What is more melancholy and more profound than to see a thousand objects for the first and the last time? To travel is to be born and to die at every instant;

This man was the man.

all were the same, only above the Président's head there hung a crucifix, something which the courts had lacked at the time of his condemnation: God had been absent when he had been judged.

augury

indulgence and kindness saved me, as severity had ruined me.

He withdrew, and the door closed behind him as it had opened, for those who do certain sovereign things are always sure of being served by some one in the crowd.

Nothing could be so poignant and so terrible as this face, wherein was displayed all that may be designated as the evil of the good.

perfidious.

somnambulist

That which we admire above all, in an encounter of the nature of Waterloo, is the marvellous cleverness of chance.

One thing is certain, which is, that generally after conquerors follow thieves.

with the exception of wars of liberation, everything that armies do is by

foul means.

An army is a strange masterpiece of combination where force results from an enormous sum of impotence. Thus is war, made by humanity against...

They fell into the alarming error of taking the obedience of the soldier for the consent of the nation.

mien,

acrimony:—

It was an inhabited spot where there was no one; it was a desert place where there was some one; it was a boulevard of the great city, a street of Paris; more wild at night than the forest, more gloomy by day than a cemetery.

The ensemble was glacial, regular, hideous. Nothing oppresses the heart like symmetry. It is because symmetry is ennui, and ennui is at the very foundation of grief. Despair yawns. Something more terrible than a hell where one suffers may be imagined, and that is a hell where one is bored.

superannuated

He suffered all the pangs of a mother, and he knew not what it meant; for that great and singular movement of a heart which begins to love is a very obscure and a very sweet thing.

Poor old man, with a perfectly new heart!

Good thoughts have their abysses as well as evil ones.

the fate of woman as summed up in Fantine,

public authority as personified in Javert.

beggar who gives alms.

erudite,

In this nineteenth century, the religious idea is undergoing a crisis. People are unlearning certain things, and they do well, provided that, while unlearning them they learn this: There is no vacuum in the human heart.

cumbrous

seraglio

odalisque,

phthisis

"Ingrates!" says the garment, "I protected you in inclement weather. Why will you have nothing to do with me?" "I have just come from the deep sea," says the fish. "I have been a rose," says the perfume. "I have loved you," says the corpse. "I have civilized you," says the convent.

To this there is but one reply: "In former days."

To dream of the indefinite prolongation of defunct things, and of the government...

restore dogmas in a bad condition, to regild shrines, to patch up cloisters, to rebless reliquaries, to refurnish superstitions, to revictual fanaticisms, to put new handles on holy water brushes and militarism, to reconstitute monasticism and militarism, to believe in the salvation of society by the mu...

These theorists, who are in other respects people of intelligence, have a very simple process; they apply to the past a glazing which they call social order, divine right, morality, family, the respect of elders, antique authority, sacred tradition, legitimacy, religion; and they go about shouting, "Look! take this,...

As for us, we respect the past here and there, and we spare it, above all, provided that it consents to be dead. If it insists on being alive, we attack it, and we try to kill it.

Superstitions, bigotries, affected devotion, prejudices, those forms all forms as they are, are tenacious of life; they have teeth and nails in their smoke, and they must be clasped close, body to body, and war must be made on them, and that without truce; for it is one of the fatalities of humanity to be condemned to eternal combat with phantoms. It is difficult to seize darkness by the throat, and to hurl it to the earth.

Let us fight, but let us make a distinction. The peculiar property of truth is never to commit excesses.

What a force is kindly and serious examination! Let us not apply a flame where only a light is required.

subjacent

Close to the right of the man, beside it, at the least, there exists the right of the soul.

To crush fanaticism and to venerate the infinite, such is the law.

We have a duty to labor over the human soul, to defend the mystery against the miracle, to adore the incomprehensible and reject the absurd,