Quotes from "Les Miserables"
"Man has a body that is both his burden and his temptation. He ought to watch over it. Keep it in bounds, repress it, and obey it only as a last resort. It may be wrong to obey even then, but if so, the fault is venial. It is a fall, but a fall onto the k nees, which may end in prayer."
Fantine: Book One - Chapter Four
"The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness."
Fantine: Book One - Chapter Four
"It's wrong to be so absorbed in divine law as not to percieve human law. Death belongs to God alone. By what right do men touch that unknown thing?"
Fantine: Book One - Chapter Four
The common herd is like an old Narcissus, who adores himself and applauses the common.
Fantine: Book One - Chapter Twelve
Prosperity supposes capacity. Win in the lottery and you are an able man.
Fantine: Book One - Chapter Twelve.
The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.
Fantine: Book Five - Chapter Four
Great grief is a divine and terrible radiance which transforms the wretched.
Fantine: Book Five - Chapter Thirteen
Would you realize what Revolution is, call it Progress; and would you realize what Progress is, call it Tomorrow.
Cosette: Book One - Chapter Seventeen
Great blunders are often made, like large ropes, of a multitude of fibers.
Cosette: Book Five - Chapter Ten
"We bow to the man who kneels. A faith is necessary to man. Woe to him who believes in nothing. A man is not idle because he is absorbed in though. There is a visible labor, and an invisible labor. To meditate is to labor; to think is to act. Folded arms work, clasped hands perform, a gaze fixed on the heavens work."
Cosette: Book Seven - Chapter Eight
No one ever keeps a secret so well as a child.
Cosette: Book Eight - Chapter Eight
"A volcano illuminates, but daylight furnishes a still better illumination."
Marius: Book Four - Chapter One
Social prosperity means man happy, the citizen free, and the nation great.
Saint Denis: Book One - Chapter Four
Nothing is more dangerous than discontinued labor; it is a habit lost. A habit is easy to abandon, difficult to remove.
Saint Denis: Book Two - Chapter One
Thought is the labor of the intellect, reverie is its pleasure.
Saint Denis: Book Two - Chapter
Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins, which of the two has a grander view?
Saint Denis: Book Three - Chapter Three
" . . . those who do not want the future should think it over . . . There is only one way of refusing tomorrow, and that is to die."
St.-Denis: Book Seven - Chapter Four
A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.
Saint Denis: Book Eight - Chapter One
It is on December nights, with the thermometer at zero, that we most think of the sun.
Saint Denis: Book Eight - Chapter Seven
Great perils have this beauty, that they bring light to the fraternity of strangers.
Saint Denis: Book Twelve - Chapter Four
Civil War? What does that mean? Is there any foreign war? Isn't every war fought between men, between brothers? War is modified only by its aim. There's neither foreign war nor civil war; there's only unjust and just war.
Saint Denis: Book Thirteen - Chapter Three
There comes an hour when protest no longer suffices; after philosophy ther must be action; the strong hand finishes what the idea has sketched.
Saint Denis: Book Thirteen - Chapter Three
An enormous fortress of prejudices, privileges, superstitions, lies, exactions, abuses, violence, iniquity, darkness, is still standing on the world with its towers of hatred. It must be thrown down. This monstrous pile must be made to fall.
Saint Denis: Book Thirteen - Chapter Three
Philosophy is the microscope of thought.
Jean Valjean: ?
. . . and it is one of the bitter anxieties of the thinker to see the shadow over the human soul, and to feel progress asleep in the darkness, without being able to waken it.
Jean Valjean: Book One - Chapter Twenty
The present has its excusable quantum selfishness; the life of the moment has its rights and is not bound to sacrifice itself continually to the future.
Jean Valjean: Book One - Chapter Twenty
The pupil dilates in the night and at last finds day in it, even as the soul dilates in misfortune, and at last finds God in it.
Jean Valjean: Book Three - Chapter One
". . . The best way to worship God is to love your wife. . . Whoever loves is orthodox. . ."
Jean Valjean: Book Six - Chapter Two
Comments? Questions? Want to add something? Mail me at:
gaworth@nmsu.edu