Victor Hugo

For prying into any human affairs, none are equal to those whom it does not concern.

He went nowhere save on condition of ruling there.

Napoleon... mighty somnambulist of a vanished dream.

Jean Valjean entered the galleys sobbing and shuddering: he went out hardened; he entered in despair: he went out sullen. What had happened within this soul?

To be a saint is the exception, but to be just is the rule. Make mistakes, commit failures, sin if you will, but be just.

There are many tongues to talk, and but few heads to think.

As you see, he had a strange way of his own to judge things. I suspect he had gotten it from the Gospel.

Sire, said M. Myriel, you behold a good man, and I a great man. May each of us profit by it.

The night was not very dark; there was a full moon, across which large clouds were driving before the wind. This produced alternations of light and shade, out-of-doors eclipses and illuminations, and in-doors a kind of twilight. This twilight, enough to enable him to find his way, changing with the passing clouds, resembled that sort of livid light which falls through the window of a dungeon before which men are passing.

Did a voice whisper in his ear that he had just passed through the decisive hour of his destiny, that there was no longer a middle course for him, that if, thereafter, he should not be the best of men, he would be the worst.

If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.

Born in Provence, he [Bishop Myriel] easily became familiar with all the [Occitan] dialects of the South. [...] People loved this, and it had helped him greatly to get close to all kinds of temperaments. Whether he was in a cottage or up in a mountain, he would feel at home. He knew how to speak of the highest things using the lowliest vulgar expressions. By speaking every tongue, he entered every soul.