Quotes from book

Les Misérables

“… there is a point when the unfortunate and the infamous are associated and confused in a word, a mortal word, les miserables”

“If you are stone, be magnetic; if a plant, be sensitive; but if you are human be love.”

“There comes an hour when protest no longer suffices; after philosophy there must be action; the strong hand finishes what the idea has sketched.”

“Sometimes he used a spade in his garden, and sometimes he read and wrote. He had but one name for these two kinds of labor; he called them gardening. ‘The Spirit is a garden,’ said he”

“To die for lack of love is horrible. The asphyxia of the soul.”

“Revolutions are not born of chance but of necessity.”

“Love is the foolishness of men, and the wisdom of God.”

“If you wish to understand what Revolution is, call it Progress; and if you wish to understand what Progress is, call it Tomorrow.”

“Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions”

“To destroy abuses is not enough; Habits must also be changed. The windmill has gone, but the wind is still there."
~old man G--- to Monseigneur Bienvenu Myriel”

“It is a terrible thing to be happy! How pleased we are with it! How all-sufficient we think it! How, being in possession of the false aim of life, happiness, we forget the true aim, duty!”

“The holy law of Jesus Christ governs our civilisation, but it does not yet permeate it.”

“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.”

“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.”

“There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.”

“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 supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.”

“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.”

“A man without a woman is like a pistol without a trigger; it is the woman who makes the man go off.”