Do not ask the name of the person who seeks a bed for the night. He who is reluctant to give his name is the one who most needs shelter.
Primitive times are lyrical, ancient times epical, modern times dramatic. The ode sings of eternity, the epic imparts solemnity tohistory, the drama depicts life. The characteristic of the first poetry is ingeniousness, of the second, simplicity, of the third, truth.
We are not loved by our friends for what we are; rather, we are loved in spite of what we are.
Despotism is a long crime.
The clouds, - the only birds that never sleep.
The left-handed are precious; they take places which are inconvenient for the rest.
M. Myriel had to undergo the fate of every newcomer in a little town, where there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think.
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.
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.
Word which the finger of God has written on the brow of every man — hope!
What happened between those two beings? Nothing. They were adoring one another.
The aim of art is almost divine: to bring to life again if it is writing history, to create if it is writing poetry.
Often the losing of a battle leads to the winning of progress. Less glory but greater liberty: the drum is silent and the voices of reason can be heard.
To think is of itself to be useful; it is always and in all cases a striving toward God.
Wisdom and eloquence are not always united.
Great grief is a divine and terrible radiance which transfigures the wretched.
Short as life is, we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time.
We say that slavery has vanished from European civilization, but this is not true. Slavery still exists, but now it applies only to women and its name is prostitution.
The cruel of heart have their own black happiness.
A house is built of logs and stone, of tiles and posts and piers; a home is built of loving deeds that stand a thousand years.
Each man should frame life so that at some future hour fact and his dreaming meet.
Nothing discernible to the eye of the spirit is more brilliant or obscure than man; nothing is more formidable, complex, mysterious, and infinite. There is a prospect greater than the sea, and it is the sky; there is a prospect greater than the sky, and it is the human soul.
No doubt it was necessary to civilize man in relation to man. That work is already advanced and is making progress every day. But man must be civilized also in relation to nature.
Marius and Cosette did not ask where this would lead them. They looked at themselves as arrived. It is a strange pretension for men to ask that love should lead them somewhere.
To err is human. To loaf is Parisian.
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