Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

"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."

"...Nobody knows like a woman how to say things that are both sweet and profound. Sweetness and depth, this is all of woman; this is Heaven."

"Life's great happiness is to be convinced we are loved."

"I have been loving you a little more every minute since this morning."

"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."

"If people did not love one another, I really don't see what use there would be in having any spring."

"...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."

"Those who do not weep, do not see."

"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."

"To love another person is to see the face of God."

"Not being heard is no reason for silence."

"Love is the only future God offers."

"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."

"There is nothing like a dream to create the future."

"The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God."

"There are, as we know, powerful and illustrious atheists. At bottom, led back to the truth by their very force, they are not absolutely sure that they are atheists; it is with them only a question of definition, and in any case, if they do not believe in God, being great minds, they prove God."

"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."

"When love has fused and mingled two beings in a sacred and angelic unity, the secret of life has been discovered so far as they are concerned; they are no longer anything more than the two boundaries of the same destiny; they are no longer anything but the two wings of the same spirit. Love, soar."

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