Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

"Should we continue to look upwards? Is the light we can see in the sky one of those which will presently be extinguished? The ideal is terrifying to behold... brilliant but threatened on all sides by the dark forces that surround it: nevertheless, no more in danger than a star in the jaws of the clouds."

"The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves—say rather, loved in spite of ourselves."

"Equality, citizens, is not the whole of society on a level, a society of tall blades of grass and small oaks, or a number of entangled jealousies. It is, legally speaking, every aptitude having the same opportunity for a career; politically all consciences having the same right. Equality has an organ, gratuitous and compulsory education. We must begin with the right to the alphabet."

"Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. 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."

"Sin is a gravitation."

"This first glance of a soul which does not yet know itself is like dawn in the heavens; it is the awakening of something radiant and unknown."

"À ceux qui ignorent, enseignez-leur [...]Le coupable n'est pas celui qui y fait le péché, mais celui qui y a fait l'ombre."

"It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live."

"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."

"Be happy without picking flaws."

"...Man has a tyrant, ignorance. I voted for the demise of that particular tyrant. That particular tyrant has engendered royalty, which is authority based on falsehood, whereas science is authority based on truth. Man should be governed by science alone.""And conscience,"added the bishop."It's the same thing. Conscience is the quota of innate science we each have inside us."

"The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only."

"Not being heard is no reason for silence."

"The poor man shuddered, overflowed with an angelic joy; he declared in his transport that this would last through life; 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."

"Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise."

"Un sceptique qui adhère à un croyant cela est simple comme la loi des couleurs complémentaires.Ce qui nous manque nous attire."

"Every day has its great grief or its small anxiety. ... One cloud is dispelled, another forms. There is hardly one day in a hundred of real joy and bright sunshine."

"Love is the only future God offers."

"where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and who can say which has the wider vision?"

"As for methods of prayer, all are good, as long as they are sincere."