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

Need is a low door which, when we must by stern necessity pass through, forces the greatest to bend down the most.

Who can be sure that Jean Valjean had not been on the verge of losing heart and giving up the struggle? In loving he recovered his strength. But the truth is that he was no less vulnerable than Cosette. He protected her and she sustained him. Thanks to him she could go forward into life, and thanks to her he could continue virtous. He was the child's support and she his mainstay. Sublime, unfathomable marvel of the balance of destiny!

If a man has his throat cut in Paris, it's a murder. If 50,000 people are murdered in the east, it is a question.

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

The eye of a man should be still more reverent before the rising of a young maiden than before the rising of a star. The possibility of touch should increase respect. The down of the peach, the dust of the plum, the radiated crystal of snow, the butterfly’s wing powdered with feathers, are gross things beside that chastity that does not even know it is chaste. The young maiden is only the glimmer of a dream and is not yet statue. Her alcove is hidden in the shadows of the ideal. The indiscreet touch of the eye desecrates this dim penumbra. Here, to gaze, is to profane.

Love is the salutation of the angel to the stars