Quotes About Transformation

To destroy abuses is not enough; habits must be changed.

Great grief is a divine and terrible radiance which transfigures the wretched.

Voyager, c'est naître et mourir à chaque instant.

Revolutions spring not from an accident, but from necessity. A revolution is a return from the fictitious to the real. It is because it must be that it is.

One becomes gradually accustomed to poison.

It's not enough to abolish abuse; custom must also be transformed. The mill was pulled down, but the wind still blows.

Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I buy from you; I withdraw it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God.

No Prefect of Police believes that a cat can turn into a lion; nevertheless the thing happens...

She talked thus, bent double, shaken with sobs, blinded by tears, her neck bare, clenching her hands, coughing with a dry and short cough, stammering very feebly with an agonised voice. Great grief is a divine and terrible radiance which transfigures the wretched. At that moment Fantine had again become beautiful. At certain instants she stopped and tenderly kissed the policeman's coat. She would have softened a heart of granite; but you cannot soften a heart of wood

He believed that faith gives health. He sought to counsel and calm the despairing by pointing out the Man of Resignation, and to transform the grief that contemplates the grave by showing it the grief that looks up to the stars.

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.

Never, even among animals, does the creature born to be a dove change into an osprey. That is only seen among men.

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. Certain demolitions take place, and it is well that they do, but on condition that they are followed by reconstructions.

The poor priest went to his poor mountaineers with empty hands, and he returns from them with his hands full. I set out bearing only my faith in God; I have brought back the treasure of a cathedral.

He held his hat in his hand; there was no disorder in his clothing; his coat was carefully buttoned: he was very pale, and he trembled slightly; his hair, which had still been gray on his arrival in Arras, was now entirely white: it had turned white during the hour he had sat there.

It was the second white apparition which he had encountered. The Bishop had caused the dawn of virtue to rise on his horizon; Cosette caused the dawn of love to rise.

A forza d'uscire per recarsi a sognare, viene il giorno in cui si esce per andarsi ad annegare.

It was a garbage heap, and it was Sinai.

At the same time, his ideas underwent an extraordinary change. The phases of this change were numerous and successive.

In becoming dirt, she has been turned to stone. To touch her is to feel a chill.

Se quereis saber o que é a revolução, chamai-lhe Progresso, se quereis saber o que é o progresso, chamai-lhe Amanhã

And these things took place, and the kings resumed their thrones, and the master of Europe was put in a cage, and the old régime became the new régime, and all the shadows and all the light of the earth changed place, because, on the afternoon of a certain summer's day, a shepherd said to a Prussian in the forest, "Go this way, and not that!

Everyday he saw better, and he began to climb slowly, one by one, almost reluctantly at first then, with intoxication and, as though drawn by an irresistible fascination, steps that started off dark, then gradually became dimly illuminated, only to end in the luminous and splendid blaze of enthusiasm.

Jean Valjean watched these ravages with anxiety. He who felt that he could never do anything but crawl, walk at the most, beheld wings sprouting on Cosette.