1. “There is lucidity inspired by the nearness of the grave:to be close to death is to see clearly”
2. “And by the way, Monsieur Marius, I believe that I was a little bit in love with you.”
3. “When love has fused and mingled two beings in a sacred and angelic unity, the secret of life has been discovered so far as they are concerned; they are no longer anything more than the two boundaries of the same destiny; they are no longer anything but the two wings of the same spirit. Love, soar.”
4. “What is fright by night is curiosity by day.”
5. “Nobody loves the light like the blind man.”
6. “To owe life to a malefactor . . . to be, in spite of himself, on a level with a fugitive from justice . . . to betray society in order to be true to his own conscience; that all these absurdities . . . should accumulate on himself—this is what prostrated him.”
7. “Be happy without picking flaws.”
8. “The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only.”
9. “He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two.”
10. “I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat was threadbare – there were holes at his elbows; the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul.”
11. “Progress must believe in God. The good cannot be served by impiety. An atheist is an evil leader of the human race.”
12. “There is always a patch of blue sky to lovers, although the rest of the world may see nothing but their umbrellas.”
13. “Every bird that flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw.”
14. “Love is the foolishness of men, and the wisdom of God.”
15. “What Is Love? I have met in the streets a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul.”
16. “Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.”
17. “There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.”
18. “To die of love is to live by it.”
19. “[You] do not care for the cruder aspect of truth. Christ cared. He drove the money-lenders from the temple. His scourge was a great teller of truths.”
20. “If you are stone, be magnetic; if a plant, be sensitive; but if you are human be love.”
21. “Love has no middle term; either it destroys, or it saves. All human destiny is this dilemma. This dilemma, destruction or salvation, no fate proposes more inexorably than love. Love is life, if it is not death. Cradle; coffin, too. The same sentiment says yes and no in the human heart. Of all the things God has made, the human heart is the one that sheds most light, and alas! most night.”
22. “Since there is always more misery in the depths than compassion in the heights, everything was given, so to speak, before it was received”
23. “It is ourselves we have to fear. Prejudice is the real robber, and vice the real murderer.”
24. “Faith is necessary to men; woe to him who believes in nothing!.”
25. “A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is invisible labor.”
26. “We are not among those who sing the praises of war; we tell the truth about it when the need arises. War has tragic splendors which we have not sought to conceal, but it also has its especial squalors, among which is the prompt stripping of the bodies of the dead. The day following a battle always dawns on naked corpses.”
27. “There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.”
28. “And remember, the truth that once was spoken: To love another person is to see the face of God.”
29. “There are men who dig for gold; he dug for compassion. Poverty was his goldmine; and the universality of suffering a reason for the universality of charity.”
30. “Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.”
31. “I have been loving you a little more every minute since this morning.”
32. “Life’s great happiness is to be convinced we are loved.”
33. “God knows better than we do what we need.”
34. “There is suffering in the light; in excess it burns. Flame is hostile to the wing. To burn and yet to fly, that is the miracle of genius.”
35. “Humanity is identity. All men are the same clay. No difference, here below at least, in predestination. The same darkness before, the same flesh during, the same ashes after life. But ignorance, mixed with the human composition, blackens it. This incurable ignorance possesses the heart of man, and there becomes evil.”
36. “It is man’s consolation that the future is to be a sunrise instead of a sunset.”
37. “There are, as we know, powerful and illustrious atheists. At bottom, led back to the truth by their very force, they are not absolutely sure that they are atheists; it is with them only a question of definition, and in any case, if they do not believe in God, being great minds, they prove God.”
38. “The first symptom of true love in a man is timidity, in a young woman, boldness.”
39. “A shadow is hard to seize by the throat and dash to the ground.”
40. “Gentlemen, my father always detested me because I could not understand mathematics. I understand only love and liberty.”
41. “He sought to counsel and soothe the despairing by pointing to the resigned, and to transform the grief which sees only a pit into the grief with sees a star.”
42. “For there are many great deeds done in the small struggles of life.”
43. “A man without a woman is like a pistol without a trigger; it is the woman who makes the man go off.”
44. “There is neither a foreign war nor a civil war; there is only just and unjust war.”
45. “Those who do not weep, do not see.”
46. “Nothing is more imminent than the impossible . . . what we must always foresee is the unforeseen.”
47. “You look at a star for two reasons, because it is luminous, and because it is impenetrable.”
48. “His mental attitude was compounded of two very simple principles, admirable in themselves but which, by carrying them to extremes, he made almost evil – respect for authority and hatred of revolt against it.”
49. “The cruel of heart have their own black happiness.”
50. “You who suffer because you love, love still more. To die of love, is to live by it.”
51. “Nobody knows like a woman how to say things that are both sweet and profound. Sweetness and depth, this is all of woman; this is Heaven.”
52. “A strange thing has happened, do you know? I am in darkness. There is a person who, departing, took away the sun.”
53. “In a word, they wanted Progress, that hallowed, good, and gentle thing, and they demanded it in a terrible fashion, with oaths on their lips and weapons in their hands. They were barbarous, yes; but barbarians in the cause of civilization. […] For our part, if we had to choose between the barbarians of civilization and those civilized upholders of barbarism, we would choose the former.”
54. “For she learned to laugh, and as she did so her whole appearance changed, its darkness was dispelled.”
55. “He had not yet lived long enough to have discovered that nothing is more close at hand then the impossible, and that what must be looked for is always the unforeseen.”
56. “Promise to give me a kiss on my brow when I am dead.–I shall feel it.”
57. “Books are cold but safe friends.”
58. “Laughter is sunshine, it chases winter from the human face.”
59. “The earth is a great piece of stupidity.”
60. “There is something more terrible than a hell of suffering–a hell of boredom. ”
61. “A doctor’s door should never be closed, a priest’s door should always be open.”
62. “Forget not, never forget that you have promised me to use this silver to become an honest man…. Jean Valjean, my brother: you belong no longer to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I am buying for you. I withdraw it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God!.”
63. “Gentlemen of the human race, I say to hell with the lot of you.”
64. “where there is no more hope, song remains.”
65. “There is nothing like a dream to create the future.”
66. “Did any voice whisper to him that he was at a turning-point in his life, that henceforth there could be no middle way for him, that he must become either the best of men or the worst, rise even higher than the bishop himself or sink lower than the felon, reach supreme heights of goodness or become a monster of depravity?”
67. “And do you know Monsieur Marius? I believe I was a little in love with you.”
68. “There are people who observe the rules of honor as we do the stars, from a very long way off.”
69. “A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in–what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.”
70. “As for methods of prayer, all are good, as long as they are sincere.”
71. “If people did not love one another, I really don’t see what use there would be in having any spring.”
72. “Youth is the future smiling at a stranger, which is itself.”
73. “Success is an ugly thing. Men are deceived by its false resemblances to merit…. They confound the brilliance of the firmament with the star-shaped footprints of a duck in the mud.”
74. “When two mouths, made sacred by love, draw near to each other to create, it is impossible, that above that ineffable kiss there should not be a thrill in the immense mystery of the stars.”
75. “To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.”
76. “To die is nothing; but it is terrible not to live.”
77. “Not being heard is no reason for silence.”
78. “No fear, no regrets.”
79. “The realities of life do not allow themselves to be forgotten.”
80. “To lie a little is not possible: he who lies, lies the whole lie.”
81. “The beautiful is as useful as the useful.” He added after a moment’s silence, “Perhaps more so.”
82. “Life is a theatre set in which there are but few practicable entrances.”
83. “You ask me what forces me to speak? a strange thing; my conscience.”
84. “Curiosity is gluttony. To see is to devour.”
85. “It is a charming quality of the happiness we inspire in others that, far from being diminished like a reflection, it comes back to us enhanced.”
86. “She worked in order to live, and presently fell in love, also in order to live, for the heart, too, has its hunger.”
87. “I’d like a drink. I desire to forget life. Life is a hideous invention by somebody I don’t know. It doesn’t last, and it’s good for nothing. You break your neck simply living.”
88. “Whom man kills God restores to life; whom the brothers pursue the Father redeems. Pray and believe and go onward into life.””
89. “The fiercest animals are disarmed by a tribute to their young. The mother thanked her and invited her to sit on the bench by the door while she herself remained seated on the step.”
90. “There are no weeds, and no worthless men. There are only bad farmers.”
91. “She loved with so much passion as she loved with ignorance. She did not know whether it were good or evil, beneficent or dangerous, necessary or accidental, eternal or transitory, permitted or prohibited: she loved.”
92. “One can no more keep the mind from returning to an idea than the sea from returning to a shore. For a sailor, this is called the tide; in the case of the guilty it is called remorse. God stirs up the soul as well as the ocean.”
93. “That is the explanation of war, an outrage by humanity upon humanity in despite of humanity.”
94. “Let us study things that are no more. It is necessary to understand them, if only to avoid them.”
95. “Diamonds are to be found only in the darkness of the earth, and truth in the darkness of the mind.”
96. “There comes an hour when protest no longer suffices; after philosophy there must be action; the strong hand finishes what the idea has sketched.”
97. “It was SHE. Whoever has loved knows all the radiant meaning contained in the three letters of this word ‘she.”
98. “They were eyes no longer, but had become those fathomless mirrors which in men who have known the depths of suffering may replace the conscious gaze, so that they no longer see reality but reflect the memory of past events.”
99. “He loved books; books are cold but safe friends.”
100. “To die for lack of love is horrible. The asphyxia of the soul.”
101. “If I speak, I am condemned! If I stay silent, I am damned!”
102. “As with stomachs, we should pity minds that do not eat.”
103. “He was fond of books, for they are cool and sure friends”
104. “He who knows the answer to this knows all things. He is alone. His name is God.”
105. “Remember this, my friends: there are no such things as bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators.”
106. “The quantity of civilization is measured by the quality of imagination.”
107. “All the human and animal manure which the world wastes, if returned to the land, instead of being thrown into the sea, would suffice to nourish the world.”
108. “Are you afraid of the good you might do?”
109. “It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.”
110. “In love there are no friends everywhere where there is a pretty woman hostility is open.”
111. “He who does not weep does not see.”
112. “Excess of suffering, as we have seen, had made him in some sort a visionary.”
113. “What happened between those two beings? Nothing. They were adoring one another.”
114. “This first glance of a soul which does not yet know itself is like dawn in the heavens; it is the awakening of something radiant and unknown.”
115. “The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.”
116. “We pray together, we are afraid together, and then we go to sleep. Even if Satan came into the house, no one would interfere. After all, what is there to fear in this house? There is always one with us who is the strongest. Satan may visit our house, but the good Lord lives here.”
117. “The supreme happiness in life is the assurance of being loved; of being loved for oneself, even in spite of oneself.”
118. “To love another person is to see the face of God.”
119. “I advance in life, I grow more simple, and I become more and more patriotic for humanity.”
120. “Diamonds are found only in the dark places of the earth, truths are found only in the depths of thought.”
121. “Let us sacrifice one day to gain perhaps a whole life.”