"

The poor man shuddered, overflowed with an angelic joy; he declared in his transport that this would last through life; he said to himself that he rea...more

"

Do not forget, do not ever forget, that you have promised me to use the money to make yourself an honest man.'Valjean, who did not recall having made ...more

"

He was there alone with himself, collected, tranquil, adoring, comparing the serenity of his heart with the serenity of the skies, moved in the darkne...more

"

Death belongs only to God. What right have men to lay hands on a thing so unknown?

"

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

"

What was more needed by this old man who divided the leisure hours of his life, where he had so little leisure, between gardening in the daytime, and ...more

"

There are, as we know, powerful and illustrious atheists. At bottom, led back to the truth by their very force, they are not absolutely sure that they...more

"

Great griefs exhaust. They discourage us with life. The man into whom they enter feels something taken from him. In youth, their visit is sad; later o...more

"

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

"

Ecclesiastes names thee Almighty, the Maccabees name thee Creator, the Epistle to the Ephesians names thee Liberty, Baruch names thee Immensity, the P...more

"

Because things are not agreeable," said Jean Valjean, "that is no reason for being unjust towards God.

"

His ideas assumed a kind of stupefied and mechanical quality which is peculiar to despair.

"

Emergencies have always been necessary to progress. It was darkness which produced the lamp. It was fog that produced the compass. It was hunger that ...more

"

Dear God! how beauty varies in nature and art. In a woman the flesh must be like marble in a statue the marble must be like flesh.

"

Does there exist an Infinity outside ourselves? Is that infinity One, immanent and permanent, necessarily having substance, since He is infinite and i...more