The realities of life do not allow themselves to be forgotten.

The flesh is the upper surface of the unknown.

The ode lives upon the ideal, the epic upon the grandiose, the drama upon the real.

I didn't believe it could be so monstrous. It's wrong to be so absorbed in divine law as not to perceive human law. Death belongs to God alone. By what right do men tough that unknown thing?

The ideal and the beautiful are identical; the ideal corresponds to the idea, and beauty to form; hence idea and substance are cognate.

In 1815, M. Charles Francois-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D-----. He was a man of seventy-five, and had occupied the bishopric of D----- since 1806. Although it in no manner concerns, even in the remotest degree, what we have to relate, it may not be useless, were it only for the sake of exactness in all things, to notice here the reports and gossip which had arisen on his account from the time of his arrival in the diocese.

Do you hear the people sing Lost in the valley of the night? It is the music of a people Who are climbing to the light. For the wretched of the earth There is a flame that never dies. Even the darkest night will end And the sun will rise.