My greatness does not extend to this shelf.

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!

Son, brother, father, lover, friend. There is room in the heart for all the affections, as there is room in heaven for all the stars.

True or false, that which is said of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all in their destinies, as that which they do.

I am an intelligent river which has reflected successively all the banks before which it has flowed by meditating only on the images offered by those changing shores.

Every bird which flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw. Germination includes the hatching of a meteor and the tap of a swallow's bill breaking the egg, and it leads forward the birth of an earth-worm and the advent of Socrates.

Creation lives, grows, and multiplies; man is but a witness.