Quotes About Author

His tavern sign bore witness to his feats of arms. He had painted it himself, being a Jack-of-all-trades who did everything badly.

There is, we are aware, a philosophy that denies the infinite. There is also a philosophy, classified as pathologic, that denies the sun; this philosophy is called blindness.

Enjolras caught glimpses of a luminous uprising under the dark skirts of the future.

In 1804, M. Myriel was the Cure of B—— [Brignolles]. He was already advanced in years, and lived in a very retired manner.

Nothing chills the heart like symmetry, for symmetry is ennui and ennui is at the heart of grief.

It seemed as though he had for a soul the book of the natural law.

the highest monuments of human civilization accept its ironies and lend their eternity to its mischievous pranks.

Love is a fault; so be it. Fantine was innocence floating high over fault.

The episcopal palace of D—— adjoins the hospital.

Nothing is so charming as the ruddy tints that happiness can shed around a garret room.

He returned the money with a graceful letter saying that he had found a means of livelihood which would supply him with all his needs. At the moment he had three francs in the world.

there are, and it is proper to add this distinction to the distinctions already pointed out in another chapter,—there are accepted revolutions, revolutions which are called revolutions; there are refused revolutions, which are called riots.

It is possible to conceive of something even more terrible than a hell of suffering, and that is a hell of boredom.

What are the convulsions of a city compared with the riots of the soul? Man is a depth still more profound than the people.

In opposition to this celestial tenderness, he summoned up pride, the fortress of evil in man.

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.

these cause the ideas of renunciation and solitude to germinate in him? Was he, in the midst

trivial,—there are no trivial facts in humanity, nor little leaves in vegetation,—are useful.

CHAPTER IV—THOLOMYES IS SO MERRY THAT HE SINGS A SPANISH DITTY

It is a charming quality of the happiness we inspire in others that, far from being diminished like a reflection, it comes back to us enhanced.

Properly speaking, he no longer held opinions; he had sympathies. To which party did he belong? To the party of humanity.

Do you want a priest? I have one. answered Jean Valjean.

This man of lofty virtue had three domiciles in Paris solely for the purpose of evading the police.

Blacheville smiles with the self-satisfied smugness of a man whose vanity is tickled