To lie a little is not possible: he who lies, lies the whole lie.

He was at his own request and through his own complicity driven out of all his happinesses one after the other; and he had this sorrow, that after having lost Cosette wholly in one day, he was afterwards obliged to lose her again in detail.

A man without a woman is like a pistol without a trigger; it is the woman who makes the man go off.

Every bird which flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw.

Brothers, he who dies here dies in the radiance of the future, and we are entering a tomb all flooded with the dawn.

Everything Changes. The only thing that remains immovable across the centuries and fixes the character of a people is cooking.

As we have said, robust souls are sometimes almost, but not entirely, overthrown by strokes of misfortune....Despair has steps leading upward. From total depression we rise to despondency, from despondency to affliction, from affliction to melancholy. Melancholy is a twilight state in which suffering transmutes into a somber joy....Melancholy is the enjoyment of being sad.