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Being good is easy, what is difficult is being just.

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Darks drifts covered the horizon. A strange shadow approaching nearer and nearer, was spreading little by little over men, over things, over ideas; a ...more

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Monsieur, innocence is its own crown! Innocence has only to act to be noble! She is as august in rags as fleur de lys.

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In the chaos of sentiments and passions which defend a barricade, there is something of everything; there is bravery, youth, honor, enthusiasm, the id...more

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He thought of that heroic Colonel Pontmercy . . . who had left upon every field of victory in Europe drops of that same blood which he, Marius, had in...more

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The night was starless and very dark. Without doubt, in the gloom some mighty angel was standing, with outstretched wings, awaiting the soul.

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It is a mournful task to break the sombre attachments of the past.

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He was troubled; this brain, so limpid in its blindness, had lost its transparency; there was a cloud in this crystal.

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To breathe Paris is to preserve one's soul.

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If no one loved, the sun would go out.

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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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Let us show that, if the people abandon the republicans, the republicans do not abandon the people.

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Cosette, by learning that she was beautiful, lost the grace of not knowing it; an exquisite grace, for beauty heightened by artlessness is ineffable, ...more

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. . . for men felt therein the presence of that great human thing which is called law, and that great divine thing which is called justice.

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If they had had a different neighbour, one less sel-absorbed and more concerned for others, a man of normal, charitable instincts, their desperate sta...more