Life is a flower of which love is honey.

Short as life is, we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time.

It is most pleasant to commit a just action which is disagreeable to someone whom one does not like.

Oh! Everything I loved!

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.

Need is a low door which, when we must by stern necessity pass through, forces the greatest to bend down the most.

There are people who observe the rules of honor as one observes the stars, from a great distance.