They say love is blindness of heart; I say not to love is blindness.

The great acts of love are done by those who are habitually performing small acts of kindness.

There is no distress so complete but that even in the most critical moments the inexplicable sunrise of hope is seen in its depths.

O youth! thou often tearest thy wings against the thorns of voluptuousness.

Earnestness is the salt of eloquence.

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!

To crush out fanaticism and revere the infinite, such is the law. Let us not confine ourselves to falling prostrate beneath the tree of creation and contemplating its vast ramifications full of stars. We have a duty to perform, to cultivate the human soul, to defend mystery against miracle, to adore the incomprehensible and to reject the absurd; to admit nothing that is inexplicable excepting what is necessary, to purify faith and obliterate superstition from the face of religion, to remove the vermin from the garden of God.