For true poetry, complete poetry, consists in the harmony of contraries. Hence, it is time to say aloud--and it is here above allthat exceptions prove the rule--that everything that exists in nature exists in art.

There is no distress so complete but that even in the most critical moments the inexplicable sunrise of hope is seen in its depths.

...there is a point when the unfortunate and the infamous are associated and confused in a word, a mortal word, les miserables

She loved with so much passion as she loved with ignorance. She did not know whether it were good or evil, beneficent or dangerous, necessary or accidental, eternal or transitory, permitted or prohibited: she loved.

As with stomachs, we should pity minds that do not eat.

Slowly he took out the clothes in which, ten years beforem Cosette had left Montfermeil; first the little dress, then the black scarf, then the great heavy child's shoes Cosette could still almost have worn, so small was her foot, then the vest of very thich fustian, then the knitted petticoat, the the apron with pockets, then the wool stockings.... Then his venerable white head fell on the bed, this old stoical heart broke, his face was swallowed up, so to speak, in Cosette's clothes, and anybody who had passed along the staircase at that moment would have heard irrepressible sobbing.

Nothing is more imminent than the impossible . . . what we must always foresee is the unforeseen.