Victor Hugo

Civil war? What does this mean? Is there any foreign war? Is not every war between men, war between brothers? War is modified only by its aim. There is neither foreign war, nor civil war; there is only unjust war and just war.

He said to himself that he really had not suffered enough to deserve such radiant happiness, and he thanked God, in the depths of his soul, for having permitted that he, a miserable man, should be so loved by this innocent being.

No. I am the devil, but that is all the same to me.

The road is free; the streets belong to everybody.

"Bossuet!" Courfeyrac exclaimed. "Eagle of Meaux! you are a prodigious fool. Follow a man who is following a man!"

This old man, so firm and so brave before so great a peril, seemed to be one of those natures who are courageous as they are good, simply and naturally. The father of a woman that we love is never a stranger to us. Marius felt proud of this unknown man.

Social prosperity means man happy, the citizen free, the nation great.

Logic ignores the Almost, just as the sun ignores the candle.

Finally, he had never succeeded in loving any woman as much as a tulip bulb, or any man as much as an Elzevir.

His life had been darkness, his end was night.

His specialty was to succeed in nothing... He was poor, but his fund of good humor was inexhaustible. He soon reached the last sou but never the last burst of laughter. When met by adversity, he saluted that acquaintance cordially, he patted catastrophes on the back; he was so familiar with fatality as to call it by its nick-name.

The prisoner was no longer fastened to the bed save by one leg.

Before the seven men had had time to recover themselves and spring upon him, he had bent over to the fireplace, reached his hand towards the furnace, then rose up, and now Thenardier, the Thenardiess, and the bandits, thrown by the shock into the back part of the room, beheld him with stupefaction, holding above his head the glowing chisel, from which fell an ominous light, almost free and in a formidable attitude.