Nature is pitiless; she never withdraws her flowers, her music, her fragrance, and her sunlight from before human cruelty or suffering.

Wide horizons lead the soul to broad ideas; circumscribed horizons engender narrow ideas; this sometimes condemns great hearts to become small minded.Broad ideas hated by narrow ideas,-this is the very struggle of progress.

There is a material advancement; we desire it. There is, also, a moral grandeur; we hold fast to it.

The quantity of civilization is measured by the quality of imagination.

Hope is a delusion; no hand can grasp a wave or a shadow.

...Human thought has no limit. At its risk and peril, it analyzes and dissects its own fascination. We could almost say that, by a sort of splendid reaction, it fascinates nature; the mysterious world surrounding us returns what it receives; it is likely that contemplators are contemplated.

So long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Miserables cannot fail to be of use.