The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.
That it was no doubt a dark hour, but that he should get through it; that after all he held his destiny, evil as it might be, in his own hand; that he was master of it. He clung to that thought.
One might almost say that affinities begin with the letters of the alphabet. In that sequence, O and P are inseparable. You might just as well say O and P as Orestes and Pylades. A true satellite of Enjolras, Grantaire lived within this circle of you...
Do not inquire he name if him who asks a shelter of you. The very man who's embarrassed by his name is the one who needs shelter
A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in--what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.
If we wish to be happy, monsieur, we must never comprehend duty; for, as soon as we comprehend it, it is implacable. One would say that it punishes you for comprehending it; but no, it rewards you for it; for it puts you into a hell where you feel Go...
A week passed, and Jean Valjean had not taken a step in his room. He still remained in bed. The portress said to her husband:–"The good man upstairs yonder does not get up, he no longer eats, he will not last long. That man has his sorrows, that he...
Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the ...
Intellectual and moral growth is no less indispensable than material improvement. Knowledge is a viaticum. Though is a prime necessity; truth is nourishment, like wheat. A reasoning faculty, deprived of knowledge and wisdom, pines away. We should fee...
À ceux qui ignorent, enseignez-leur [...] Le coupable n'est pas celui qui y fait le péché, mais celui qui y a fait l'ombre.
Equality, citizens, is not the whole of society on a level, a society of tall blades of grass and small oaks, or a number of entangled jealousies. It is, legally speaking, every aptitude having the same opportunity for a career; politically all consc...
That I may carry on what I have begun, that I may do good, that I may be one day a grand and encouraging example that it may be said that there was finally some little happiness resulting from this suffering which I have undergone and this virtue to ...
The true division of humanity is this: the luminous and the dark... To diminish the number of the dark, to increase the number of the luminous, there is the aim.
Intellectual and moral growth is no less indispensable than material amelioration... If three is anything more poignant than a body agonizing for want of bread, it is a soul dying of hunger for light.
Without knowing it, Javert in his awful happiness was deserving of pity, like every ignorant man who triumphs. Nothing could have been more poignant or more heartrending than that countenance on which was inscribed all the evil in what is good.
This exists. It can be seen. It can be touched. These in pace, these dungeons, these iron hinges, these necklets, that lofty peep-hole on a level with the river's current, that box of stone closed with a lid of granite like a tomb, with this differen...
Curiosity is gluttony. To see is to devour.
L'homme n'est pas un cercle à un seul centre ; c'est une ellipse à deux foyers. Les faits sont l'un, les idées sont l'autre.
