Forget not, never forget that you have promised me to use this silver to become an honest man.... Jean Valjean, my brother: you belong no longer to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I am buying for you. I withdraw it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God!

[T]he small is great, the great is small; all is in equilibrium in necessity.

Nothing makes a man so adventurous as an empty pocket.

To a gargoyle on the ramparts of Notre Dame as Esmeralda rides off with Gringoire Quasimodo says. "Why was I not made of stone like thee?

As a means of contrast with the sublime, the grotesque is, in our view, the richest source that nature can offer.

The memory of an absent person shines in the deepest recesses of the heart, shining the more brightly the more wholly its object has vanished: a light on the horizon of the despairing, darkened spirit; a star gleaming in our inward night.

If you are stone, be magnetic; if a plant, be sensitive; but if you are human be love.