There are moments when a rope's end, a pole, the branch of the tree, is life itself, and it is a frightful thing to see a living being lose his hold upon it, and fall like a ripe fruit.

This conflict between right and fact has endured since the origins of society. To bring the duel to an end, to consolidate the pure ideal with the human reality, to make the right peacefully interpenetrate the fact, and the fact the right, this is the work of the wise.

To err is human. To loaf is Parisian.

Reason is intelligence taking exercise. Imagination is intelligence with an erection.

Sorrow is a fruit. God does not make it grow on limbs too weak to bear it.

As for methods of prayer, all of them are good as long as they are sincere.

A little girl without a doll is almost as unhappy, and quite as impossible, as a woman without children." from chapter VIII of Les Miserables