The little people must be sacred to the big ones, and it is from the rights of the weak that the duty of the strong is comprised.

At that moment of love, a moment when passion is absolutely silent under omnipotence of ecstasy, Marius, pure seraphic Marius, would have been more capable of visiting a woman of the streets than of raising Cosette’s dress above the ankle. Once on a moonlit night, Cosette stopped to pick up something from the ground, her dress loosened and revealed the swelling of her breasts. Marius averted his eyes.

The most powerful symptom of love is a tenderness which becomes at times almost insupportable.

The clouds, - the only birds that never sleep.

Sacrificing the earth for paradise is giving up the substance for the shadow.

We shall look on crime as a disease, and its physicians shall displace the judges, its hospitals displace the Galleys. Liberty and health shall be alike. We shall pour balm and oil where we formerly applied iron and fire; evil will be treated in charity, instead of in anger. This change will be simple and sublime.

When a man is out of sight, it is not too long before he is out of mind.