A language does not become fixed. The human intellect is always on the march, or, if you prefer, in movement, and languages with it.

They say love is blindness of heart; I say not to love is blindness.

I love all men who think, even those who think otherwise than myself.

Who among us has not sought peace in a song?

He was at his own request and through his own complicity driven out of all his happinesses one after the other; and he had this sorrow, that after having lost Cosette wholly in one day, he was afterwards obliged to lose her again in detail.

As we have said, robust souls are sometimes almost, but not entirely, overthrown by strokes of misfortune....Despair has steps leading upward. From total depression we rise to despondency, from despondency to affliction, from affliction to melancholy. Melancholy is a twilight state in which suffering transmutes into a somber joy....Melancholy is the enjoyment of being sad.

He who is not master of his own thoughts is not accountable for his own deeds.