There is no such thing as a little country. The greatness of a people is no more determined by their numbers than the greatness of a man is by his height.
The wise man is he who knows when and how to stop
He who despairs is wrong.
A translation in verse . . . seems to me something absurd, impossible.
Wherever the Turkish hoof trods, no grass grows.
Marius and Cosette did not ask where this would lead them. They looked at themselves as arrived. It is a strange pretension for men to ask that love should lead them somewhere.