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.

The drama is complete poetry. The ode and the epic contain it only in germ; it contains both of them in a state of high development, and epitomizes both.

There is nothing like a dream to create the future.

I am a soul. I know well that what I shall render up to the grave is not myself. That which is myself will go elsewhere. Earth, thou art not my abyss!

The guillotine is the ultimate expression of Law, and its name is vengeance; it is not neutral, nor does it allow us to remain neutral.

A man trying to escape never thinks himself sufficiently concealed.

God became man, granted. The devil became a woman.