Les Misérables

by Victor Hugo

to admit, as an inexplicable fact, only what is necessary, to purify belief, to remove superstitions from above religion; to clear God of caterpillars.

There is, as we know, a philosophy which denies the infinite. There is also a

philosophy, pathologically classified, which denies the sun; this philosophy is called blindness.

fecund

The negation of the infinite leads straight to nihilism. Everything becomes "a mental conception."

interlocutor,

There is no such thing as nothingness. Zero does not exist.

nothing. Man lives by affirmation even more than by bread.

To enjoy,—what a sad aim, and what a paltry ambition! The brute enjoys. To offer thought to the thirst of men, to give them all as an elixir the notion of God, to make conscience and science fraternize in

them, to render them just by this mysterious confrontation; such is the function of real philosophy. Morality is a blossoming out of truths. Contemplation leads to action.

corbel

we neither understand man as a point of departure nor progress as an end, without those two forces which are their two motors: faith and love.

Progress is the goal, the ideal is the type. What is this ideal? It is God. Ideal, absolute, perfection, infinity: identical words.

A convent is a contradiction. Its object, salvation; its means thereto, sacrifice. The convent is supreme egoism having for its result supreme abnegation.

We blame the church when she is saturated with intrigues, we despise the spiritual which is harsh toward the temporal; but we everywhere honor the thoughtful man.

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

To mingle with one's life a certain presence of the sepulchre,—this is the law of the sage; and it is the law of the ascetic.

We, who do not believe what these women believe, but who, like them, live by faith,—we have never been able to think without a sort of tender and religious terror, without a sort of pity, that is full of envy, of those devoted, trembling and trusting creatures, of these humble and august souls, who dare to dwell on the very brink of the mystery,

waiting between the world which is closed and heaven which is not yet open, turned towards the light which one cannot see, possessing the sole happiness of thinking that they know where it is, aspiring towards the gulf, and the unknown, their eyes fixed motionless on the darkness, kneeling, bewildered, stupefied, shuddering, half lifted, at times, by the deep breaths of eternity.

orison

expiation.

It seemed as though he dared not kneel directly before God. Everything that surrounded him, that peaceful garden, those fragrant flowers, those children who uttered joyous cries, those grave and simple women, that silent cloister, slowly permeated him, and little by little, his soul became compounded of silence like the cloister, of perfume like the flowers, of simplicity like the women, of joy like the children. And then

he reflected that these had been two houses of God which had received him in succession at two critical moments in his life: the first, when all doors were closed and when human society rejected him; the second, at a moment when human society had again set out in pursuit of him, and when the galleys were again yawning; and that, had it not been for the first, he should have relapsed into crime, and had it not been for the second, into torment. His whole heart melted in gratitude, and he loved more and more.

And moreover, when both are sincere and good, no men so penetrate each other, and so amalgamate with each other, as an old priest and an old soldier. At bottom, the man is the same. The one has devoted his life to his country here below, the other to his country on high; that is the only difference.

Men and deeds were brought to judgment there. They jeered at the age, which released them from the necessity of understanding it.

They abetted each other in amazement.

To be ultra is to go beyond.

it is to reproach the idol with its small amount of idolatry; it is to insult through excess of respect; it is to discover that the Pope is not sufficiently papish, that the King is not sufficiently royal, and that the night has too much light; it is to be discontented with alabaster, with snow,

with the swan and the lily in the name of whiteness; it is to be a partisan of things to the point of becoming their enemy; it is to be so strongly for, as to be against.

Former days did not recognize Yesterday. People no longer had the feeling for what was grand.

attenuating

laconic

A light troubled by smoke, progress purchased at the expense of violence, only half satisfied this tender and serious spirit.

The good must be innocent,

To stray is human. To saunter is Parisian.

valetudinarian,

sagacious

rebus:

An escarpment rose around him. He was in accord neither

with his grandfather nor with his friends; daring in the eyes of the one, he was behind the times in the eyes of the others, and he recognized the fact that he was doubly isolated, on the side of age and on the side of youth.

At that moment of his existence when a man needs his pride, because he needs love, he felt that he was jeered at because he was badly dressed, and ridiculous because he was poor. At the age when youth swells the heart with imperial pride, he dropped his eyes more than once on his dilapidated boots, and he knew the unjust shame and the poignant blushes of wretchedness. Admirable and terrible trial from which the feeble emerge base, from which the strong emerge sublime. A crucible into which destiny casts a man, whenever it desires a scoundrel or a demi-god.

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

To speak accurately, he had no longer any opinions, he had sympathies.

Savages who go naked, with their noddles dressed like a shuttlecock, with a club in their paws, are less of brutes than those bachelors of arts! The four-penny monkeys!

assiduity

braggadocio

ennui.

Revolutions spring not from an accident, but from necessity. A revolution is a return from the fictitious to the real.

cosmogonic

From a good distribution of enjoyments results individual happiness. By a good distribution, not an equal but an equitable distribution must be understood.