His judgement demonstrates that one can be a genius and understand nothing of an art that is not one's own.

At that moment of love, a moment when passion is absolutely silent under omnipotence of ecstasy, Marius, pure seraphic Marius, would have been more capable of visiting a woman of the streets than of raising Cosette’s dress above the ankle. Once on a moonlit night, Cosette stopped to pick up something from the ground, her dress loosened and revealed the swelling of her breasts. Marius averted his eyes.

When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age.

All who suffer are full of hatred; all who live drag a remorse: the dead alone have broken their chains.

Beauty is as useful as the useful. More so, perhaps. (Le beau est aussi utile que l'utile. Plus peut-etre.)

Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions

The day that a woman who is passing before you sheds a light upon you as she goes, you are lost, you love. You have then but one thing to do: to think of her so earnestly that she will be compelled to think of you.