Paris is a sum total. Paris is the ceiling of the human race. All this prodigious city is an epitome of dead and living manners and customs. He who sees Paris, seems to see all history through with the sky and constellations in the intervals.

The most beautiful of altars, he said, is the soul of an unhappy creature consoled and thankfing God.

When you get an idea into your head you find it in everything.

What a gloomy thing, not to know the address of one's soul.

Nothing is more dangerous than discontinued labor; it is habit lost. A habit easy to abandon, difficult to resume.

M. Myriel had to undergo the fate of every newcomer in a little town, where there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think.

A few feet under the ground reigns so profound a silence, and yet so much tumult on the surface!