Victor Hugo

Monsieur procurer du roi, am I allowed to wear my scar?

He was full of regret and remorse, and he thought with despair that all he had in his soul he could say now only to a tomb.

Jean Valjean had this peculiarity, that he might be said to carry two knapsacks; in one he had the thoughts of a saint, in the other the formidable talents of a convict. He helped himself from one or the other as occasion required.

She drowned what little brain she had in them.

Give to a being the useless, and deprive him of the needful, and you have the gamin.

They belonged to that bastard class formed of low people who has risen, and intelligent people who have fallen, which lies between the classes called middle and lower, and which unites some of the faults of the latter with nearly all the vices of the former, without possessing the generous impulses of the workman, or the respectability of the bourgeois.

We are of those who believe in the pitifulness of orisons, and in the sublimity of prayer.

To meditate is to labour; to think is to act. Folded arms work, closed hands perform, a gaze fixed on heaven is a toil.

We bow to the man who kneels.

We are for religion against the religions.

Violets are blue. Roses are red.

No one ever keeps a secret so well as a child.