A bit of mould is a pleiad of flowers; a nebula is an ant-hill of stars.

I have been loving you a little more every minute since this morning.

A thousand men enslaved fear one beast free.

A benevolent malefactor, merciful, gentle, helpful, clement, a convict, returning good for evil, giving back pardon for hatred, preferring pity to vengeance, preferring to ruin himself rather than to ruin his enemy, saving him who had smitten him, kneeling on the heights of virtue, more nearly akin to an angel than to a man. Javert was constrained to admit to himself that this monster existed. Things could not go on in this manner.

Yes, instruction! Light! Light! Everything comes from light, and to everything it returns.

Genius is a promontory jutting out into the infinite.

His universal compassion was due less to natural instinct, than to a profound conviction, a sum of thoughts that in the course of living had filtered through to his heart: for in the nature of man, as in rock, there may be channels hollowed by the dropping of water, and these can never be destroyed.