To live a life which is a perpetual falsehood is to suffer unknown tortures.

In 1815, M. Charles Francois-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D-----. He was a man of seventy-five, and had occupied the bishopric of D----- since 1806. Although it in no manner concerns, even in the remotest degree, what we have to relate, it may not be useless, were it only for the sake of exactness in all things, to notice here the reports and gossip which had arisen on his account from the time of his arrival in the diocese.

One of the hardest tasks is to extract continually from one's soul an almost inexhaustible ill will.

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 such a thing as the pressure of darkness.

Love is a fault; so be it.

Revolutions spring not from accident, but from necessity. A revolution is a return from the factitious to the real. It takes place because it must.