If God had intended that man should go backward, he would have given him eyes in the back of his head.

The convent, which belongs to the West as it does to the East, to antiquity as it does to the present time, to Buddhism and Muhammadanism as it does to Christianity, is one of the optical devices whereby man gains a glimpse of infinity.

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.

There is something more terrible than a hell of suffering--a hell of boredom.

Nature is pitiless; she never withdraws her flowers, her music, her fragrance, and her sunlight from before human cruelty or suffering.

Poetry contains philosophy as the soul contains reason.

At a certain depth of distress, the poor, in their stupor, groan no longer over evil, and are no longer thankful for good.