There exists, at the bottom of all abasement and misfortune, a last extreme which rebels and joins battle with the forces of law and respectability in a desperate struggle, waged partly by cunning and partly by violence, at once sick and ferocious, in which it attacks the prevailing social order with the pin-pricks of vice and the hammer-blows of crime.

A one-eyed man is much more incomplete than a blind man, for he knows what it is that's lacking.

Every day has its great grief or its small anxiety. ... One cloud is dispelled, another forms. There is hardly one day in a hundred of real joy and bright sunshine.

The convent is supreme egotism resulting in supreme self-denial.

Ah," cried Gavroche, "what does this mean? It rains again! ...If this continues, I withdraw my subscription.

My misfortune is that I still resemble a man too much. I should liked to be wholly a beast like that goat. - Quasimodo

If people did not love one another, I really don't see what use there would be in having any spring.