There is nothing like a dream to create the future.
There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.
It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.
Il vient une heure où protester ne suffit plus ; après la philosophie il faut l’action ; la vive force achève ce que l’idée a ébauché.
There comes an hour when protest no longer suffices; after philosophy there must be action; the strong hand finishes what the idea has sketched.
Be happy without picking flaws.
La suprema dicha de la vida, es la convicción de que se es amado; amado por sí mismo, digamos mejor, ama¬do a pesar de sí mismo.
The night was starless and very dark. Without doubt, in the gloom some mighty angel was standing, with outstretched wings, awaiting the soul.
The shadow of the passions of the moment transversed this grand and gentle spirit occupied with eternal things.
The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and i...
Cosette, in her seclusion, like Marius in his, was all ready to take fire. Destiny, with its mysterious and fatal patience, was slowly bringing these two beings near each other, fully charged and all languishing with the stormy electricities of passi...
The beautiful is as useful as the useful." He added after a moment’s silence, "Perhaps more so.
He thought her more beautiful than ever, with a beauty that was at once feminine and angelic, that wholeness of beauty that had moved Petrarch to song and brought Dante to his knees.
Cosette, by learning that she was beautiful, lost the grace of not knowing it; an exquisite grace, for beauty heightened by artlessness is ineffable, and nothing is so adorable as dazzling innocence, going on her way, and holding in her hand, all unc...
Madame Magloire," retorted the Bishop, "you are mistaken. The beautiful is as useful as the useful." He added after a pause, "More so, perhaps.
He did not seek to assume the mantle of Elijah, to shed a light of the future upon the misty turmoil of events or resolve the prevailing light into a single flame; there was in him nothing of the prophet or the mystic. He was a simple soul who loved,...
A bird alone could have extricated himself from that place.
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...
