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.

Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart.

Progress is the life-style of man.

Nothing can be sadder or more profound than to see a thousand things for the first and last time.

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.

A benevolent malefactor, merciful, gentle, helpful, clement, a convict, returning good for evil, giving back pardon for hatred, preferring pity to vengeance, preferring to ruin himself rather than to ruin his enemy, saving him who had smitten him, kneeling on the heights of virtue, more nearly akin to an angel than to a man. Javert was constrained to admit to himself that this monster existed. Things could not go on in this manner.

On this point, the priest and the philosopher agree: We must die.