Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables” Quotes (191 Quotes)

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.

Desiring always to be in mourning, he clothed himself with night.

Happiness wishes everybody happy.

His whole life was now summed up in two words: absolute uncertainty within an impenetrable fog.

Jean Prouvaire was timid only in repose. Once excited, he burst forth, a sort of mirth accentuated his enthusiasm, and he was at once both laughing and lyric.

My greatness does not extend to this shelf.

Revolutions are not born of chance but of necessity.

The barber in his shop, warmed by a good stove, was shaving a customer and casting from time to time a look towards this enemy, this frozen and brazen gamin, who had both hands in his pockets, but his wits evidently out of their sheath.

The quantity of civilization is measured by the quality of imagination.

They are the same thing. Conscience is the amount of inner knowledge that we possess.

Well, listen a moment, Monsieur Mayor; I have often been severe in my life towards others. It was just. I did right. Now if I were not severe towards myself, all I have justly done would become injustice. Should I spare myself more than others? No. What! if I should be prompt only to punish others and not myself, I should be a wretched indeed! - Javert to M. Madeleine

An increase of tenderness always ended by boiling over and turning to indignation. He was at the point where we seek to adopt a course, and to accept what tears us apart.

Am I not as much a doctor as they? I too have my patients; in the first place, theirs, whom they call sick; and then my own, whom I call unfortunate.

Diamonds are to be found only in the darkness of the earth, and truth in the darkness of the mind.

He believed that faith gives health. He sought to counsel and calm the despairing by pointing out the Man of Resignation, and to transform the grief that contemplates the grave by showing it the grief that looks up to the stars.

I didn't believe it could be so monstrous. It's wrong to be so absorbed in divine law as not to perceive human law. Death belongs to God alone. By what right do men tough that unknown thing?

Laughter is sunshine, it chases winter from the human face.

No corruption is possible with the diamond.

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.

The book the reader has now before his eyes - from one end to the other, in its whole and in its details, whatever the omissions, the exceptions, or the faults - is the march from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from the false to the true, from night to day, from appetite to conscience, from rottenness to life, from brutality to duty, from Hell to Heaven, from nothingness to God. Starting point: matter; goal: the soul. Hydra at the beginning, angel at the end.

The reader will pardon us another little digression; foreign to the object of this book but characteristic and useful . . . .

This Boulatruelle was a man in bad odour with the people of the neighbourhood; he was too respectful, too humble, prompt to doff his cap to everybody; he always trembled and smiled in the presence of the gendarmes, was probably in secret connection with robber-bands, said the gossips, and suspected of lying in wait in the hedge corners at nightfall. He had nothing in his favour except that he was a drunkard.

What a grand thing it is to be loved! What a far grander thing it is to love! The heart becomes heroic, by dint of passion.

Argot is nothing more nor less than a wardrobe in which language, having some bad deed to do, disguises itself. It puts on word-masks and metaphoric rags.

And do you know Monsieur Marius? I believe I was a little in love with you.

Die, very good, but do not make others die. Suicides like the one which is about to take place here are sublime, but suicide is restricted, and does not allow of extension; and so soon as it affects your neighbors, suicide becomes murder.

He caught her, she fell, he caught her in his arms, he held her tightly unconscious of what he was doing. He held her up, though tottering himself. He felt as if his head were filled with smoke; flashes of light slipped through his eyelids; his thoughts vanished; it seemed to him that he was performing a religious act, and that he was committing a profanation. Moreover, he did not feel one passionate desire for this ravishing woman, whose form he felt against his heart. He was lost in love.

I have been loving you a little more every minute since this morning.

Let us admit, without bitterness, that the individual has his distinct interests and can, without felony, stipulate for those interests and defend them. The present has its pardonable amount of egotism; momentary life has its claims, and cannot be expected to sacrifice itself incessantly to the future. The generation which is in its turn passing over the earth is not forced to abridge its life for the sake of the generations, its equals after all, whose turn shall come later on.

No Prefect of Police believes that a cat can turn into a lion; nevertheless the thing happens...

See Monsieur Geborand, buying a pennyworth of paradise.

The counterfeits of the past take assumed names, and are fond of calling themselves the future. That eternally returning spector, the past, not infrequently falsifies its passport.

The realities of life do not allow themselves to be forgotten.

This cavern is below all, and the enemy of all; it is hatred, without exception.

What a great thing, to be loved! What a greater thing still, to love! The heart becomes heroic though passion…if no one loved, the sun would go out.

Every bird that flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw.

And, moreover, when it happens that both are sincere and good, nothing will mix and amalgamate more easily than an old priest and an old soldier. In reality, they are the same kind of man. One has devoted himself to country upon earth, the other to his country in heaven; there is no other difference.

Do not economize on the hymeneal rites; do not prune them of their splendor, nor split farthings on the day when you are radiant. A wedding is not house-keeping.

He did not study God; he was dazzled by him.

I would rather be the head of a fly than the tail of a lion.

Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices are the real murderers. The great dangers lie within ourselves.

Not being heard is no reason for silence.

She had had sweet dreams, which possibly arose from the fact that her little bed was very white.

The crowd mistrusts the allurement of paladins. The masses, ponderous bodies that they are, and fragile on account of their very heaviness, fear adventure; and there is adventure in the ideal.

The reflection of a fact is in itself a fact.

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.

What a transfiguration it is to love! And the little shrieks, the pursuits in the grass, the waists encircled by stealth, the jargon that is melody, the adoration that breaks through in the way a syllable is said, those cherries snatched form one pair of lips by another - It all catches fire and turns into celestial glories.

If we wish to be happy, monsieur, we must never comprehend duty; for, as soon as we comprehend it, it is implacable. One would say that it punishes you for comprehending it; but no, it rewards you for it; for it puts you into a hell where you feel God at your side.

Are you afraid of the good you might do?

Equality, citizens, is not the whole of society on a level, a society of tall blades of grass and small oaks, or a number of entangled jealousies. It is, legally speaking, every aptitude having the same opportunity for a career; politically all consciences having the same right. Equality has an organ, gratuitous and compulsory education. We must begin with the right to the alphabet.