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Marius had lived too little as yet to know that nothing is more imminent than the impossible, and that what we must always forsee is the unforseen.

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.

Philosophy is the microscope of thought.

Death is a good arrangement. God knows better than we do what we need. That you are happy, that Monsieur Pontmercy has Cosette, that youth espouses morning, that there are about you, my children, lilacs and nightingales, that your life is a beautiful lawn in the sunshine, that all the enchantments of heaven fill your souls, and now, that I who am good for nothing, that I die; surely all this is well. Look you, be reasonable, there is nothing else possible now, I am sure that it is all over.

There are people who observe the rules of honour as we observe the stars, from afar off.

He sleeps. Although his fate was very strange,

He lived. He died when he had no longer his angel.

The thing came to pass simply,

Of itself, as the night comes when day is gone.

In short, I am doing what I can, I suffer with the same universal suffering, and I try to assuage it, I possess only the puny forces of a man, and I cry to all: "Help me!"

When we are at the end of life, to die means to go away; when we are at the beginning, to go away means to die.

Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the grander view?

We should judge a man much more surely from what he dreams than from what he thinks.

The first symptom of true love in a young man is timidity; in a young girl it is boldness.

He had finally come hardly to look at nothing but the sky, the only thing that truth can see from the bottom of her well.