There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.

The man who fights against his own country is never a hero.

If God had intended that man should go backward, he would have given him eyes in the back of his head.

The ode lives upon the ideal, the epic upon the grandiose, the drama upon the real.

Marius was of the temperament that sinks into grief and remains there; Cosette was of the sort that plunges in and comes out again.

...Though we chisel away as best we can at the mysterious block from which our life is made, the black vein of destiny continually reappears.

Civil war.... What did the words mean? Was there any such thing as "foreign war"? Was not all warfare between men warfare between brothers?