It is a truth forever, that where the speech of man stops short there Music's reign begins.
It is not enough to be happy, one must be content.
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.
Thought is more than a right - it is the very breath of man. Whoever fetters thought attacks man himself. To speak, to write, to publish, are things, so far as the right is concerned, absolutely identical. They are the ever-enlarging circles of intelligence in action; they are the sonorous waves of thought.
Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.
Many's the man/ who thought himself wise/ but what he needed/ he did not know.
If nobody loved, the sun would go out.
Be happy without picking flaws.
To live a life which is a perpetual falsehood is to suffer unknown tortures.
There are people who observe the rules of honor as one observes the stars, from a great distance.
Daring is the price of progress. All splendid conquests are the prize of boldness, more or less.
where would the shout of love begin, if not from the summit of sacrifice?
As we have said, robust souls are sometimes almost, but not entirely, overthrown by strokes of misfortune....Despair has steps leading upward. From total depression we rise to despondency, from despondency to affliction, from affliction to melancholy. Melancholy is a twilight state in which suffering transmutes into a somber joy....Melancholy is the enjoyment of being sad.
What Shakespeare was able to do in English he would certainly not have done in French.
Nature, like a kind and smiling mother, lends herself to our dreams and cherishes our fancies.
We would be ashamed of our best behavior if the people knew the motives of our behaving so.
The world of sleep has an existence of its own.
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.
The Parisian is to the French what the Athenian was to the Greeks: no one sleeps better than he, no one is more openly frivolous and idle, no one appears more heedless. But this is misleading. He is given to every kind of listlessness, but when there is glory to be won he may be inspired with every kind of fury. Give him a pike and he will enact the tenth of August, a musket and you have Austerlitz. He was the springboard of Napoleon and the mainstay of Danton. At the cry of "la patrie" he enrols, and at the call of liberty he tears up the pavements. Beware of him!
One can resist the invasion of an army but one cannot resist the invasion of ideas.
No matter who you are, the thought of so much suffering and degradation must cause you to shudder at the sight of a veil or cassock, those two shrouds of human invention.
People do not lack strength; they lack will.
The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
Dreaming is happiness. Waiting is life.
There are fathers who do not love their children; there is no grandfather who does not adore his grandson.
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.
Cheerfulness is like money well expended in charity; the more we dispense of it, the greater our possession.
Those who live are those who fight.
Waterloo is a battle of the first rank won by a captain of the second
Almost all our desires, when examined, contain something too shameful to reveal.
Right is right only when entire.
To a gargoyle on the ramparts of Notre Dame as Esmeralda rides off with Gringoire Quasimodo says. "Why was I not made of stone like thee?
A day will come when a cannon will be exhibited in museums, just as instruments of torture are now, and the people will be astonished that such a thing could have been.
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.
The earth is a great piece of stupidity.
There is suffering in the light; in excess it burns. Flame is hostile to the wing. To burn and yet to fly, this is the miracle of genius.
If the infinite had no me, then me would be its limit. It would not be the infinite, therefore it would not be.
I am fond of them, of the inferior beings of the abyss, of those who are full of longing.
When you get an idea into your head you find it in everything.
I am writing Parsifal only for my wife - if I had to depend on the German spirit, I should have nothing more to say.
One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas.
A fixed idea ends in madness or heroism.
People do not read stupidities with impunity.
When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age.
He would give all of his clothes to his servant, admonishing him NOT to return them until he had completed his day's work.
Whether we be Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns us all. Ever since history has been written, ever since philosophy has meditated, misery has been the garment of the human race; the moment has at length arrived for tearing off that rag, and for replacing, upon the naked limbs of the Man-People, the sinister fragment of the past with the grand purple robe of the dawn.
I had a dream my life would be different from this hell I am living, so different from what it seemed. Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.
Joy is not in things; it is in us.
One sees qualities at a distance and defects at close range.
The ox suffers, the cart complains.
It is often necessary to know how to obey a woman in order sometimes to have the right to command her.
The man who does not know other languages, unless he is a man of genius, necessarily has deficiencies in his ideas.
And do you know Monsieur Marius? I believe I was a little in love with you.
Happiness lies for those who cry, those who hurt, those who have searched, and those who have tried for only they can appreciate the importance of people who have touched their lives.
I would have liked to be - indeed, I should have been - a second Rembrandt.
A woman's best qualities are harmful if undiluted with prudence.
There is a secret drawer in every woman's heart.
Curiosity is one of the forms of feminine bravery.
Love that is not jealous is neither true nor pure.
If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away.
