Let us leave to the brain what belongs to it, and agree that the work of the men of genius is of the superhuman, the offspring of man.

The three great problems of this century; the degradation of man in the proletariat, the subjection of women through hunger, the atrophy of the child by darkness.

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.

There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.

The man is placed where the Earth ends, the woman, where the heaven starts.

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

Puns are the droppings of soaring wits.