Progress is the stride of God.

I am an intelligent river which has reflected successively all the banks before which it has flowed by meditating only on the images offered by those changing shores.

...But listen, there will be more joy in heaven over the tears of a repentant sinner than over the white robes of a hundred just men.

The realities of life do not allow themselves to be forgotten.

Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices are the real murderers. The great dangers lie within ourselves.

Marius was of the temperament that sinks into grief and remains there; Cosette was of the sort that plunges in and comes out again.

As a means of contrast with the sublime, the grotesque is, in our view, the richest source that nature can offer.