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They are les misérables - the outcasts, the underdogs. And who is to blame? Is it not the most fallen who have most need of charity?

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A man may beg, but a woman has to sell.

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I have an old hat which is not worth three francs, I have a coat which lacks buttons in front, my shirt is all ragged, my elbows are torn, my boots le...more

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Are you what is called a lucky man? Well, you are sad every day. Each day has its great grief or its little care. Yesterday you were trembling for the...more

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She had spears of straw and grass in her hair, not like Ophelia gone mad through contact with Hamlet's madness, but because she had slept in some stab...more

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Are you what is called a lucky man? Well, you are sad every day. Each day has its great grief or its little care...Hardly one day in a hundred of unbr...more

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Ever since history has been written, ever since philosophy has meditated, misery has been the garment of the human race.

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I have a dream my life would be. So different from this hell I'm living. So different now from what it seem. Now life has killed the dream I dreamed."...more

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I repeat, whether we be Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns us all.

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So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilizati...more

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I advance in life, I grow more simple, and I become more and more patriotic for humanity.

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In all Thénardier's outpourings, the words and gestures, the fury blazing in his eyes, this explosion of an evil nature brazenly exposed, the mixture ...more

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The poor young man must work for his bread; he eats; when he has eaten, he has nothing left but reverie. He enters God's theater free; he sees the sky...more