Love is the foolishness of men, and the wisdom of God.

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.

But secondly you say 'society must exact vengeance, and society must punish'. Wrong on both counts. Vengeance comes from the individual and punishment from God.

Anger may be foolish and absurd, and one may be wrongly irritated, but a man never feels outraged unless in some respect he is fundamentally right.

Kings are for nations in their swaddling-clothes: France has attained her majority.

Between the government which does evil and the people who accept it - there is a certain shameful solidarity.

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