“Abstruse speculations contain vertigo.”

“Almost all our desires, when examined, contain something too shameful to reveal.”

“It was SHE. Whoever has loved knows all the radiant meaning contained in the three letters of this word ‘she.”

“Les Miserables is first of all the product of a varied experience of the world, containing the perceptions of an entire life. And this image of reality is also a realistic image. The symbol, as Hugo uses it, does not idealize things; rather, it expresses their spiritual meaning without disguising them.”

“For with love there is no middle course: it destroys, or else it saves. All human destiny is contained in that dilemma, the choice between destruction and salvation, which is nowhere more implacably posed than in love. Love is life, or it is death. It is the cradle, but also the coffin. One and the same impulse moves the human heart to say yes or no. Of all things God has created it is the human heart that sheds the brightest light and, alas, the blackest despair.”

“Thought must always contain an element of desire, but there is none in dreaming. The dream, which is wholly spontaneous, adopts and preserves, even in our utmost flights of fancy, the pattern of our spirit; nothing comes more truly from the very depths of the soul than those unconsidered and uncontrolled aspirations to the splendours of destiny. It is in these, much more than in our reasoned thoughts, that a man's true nature is to be found. Our imaginings are what most resemble us. Each of us dreams of the unknown and the impossible in his own way.”

“While they were thus embarrassed, a large chest was brought and deposited in the presbytery for the Bishop, by two unknown horsemen, who departed on the instant. The chest was opened; it contained a cope of cloth of gold, a mitre ornamented with diamonds, an archbishop's cross, a magnificent crosier,—all the pontifical vestments which had been stolen a month previously from the treasury of Notre Dame d'Embrun. In the chest was a paper, on which these words were written, "From Cravatte to Monseigneur Bienvenu.""Did not I say that things would come right of themselves?" said the Bishop. Then he added, with a smile, "To him who contents himself with the surplice of a curate, God sends the cope of an archbishop.""Monseigneur," murmured the cure, throwing back his head with a smile. "God—-or the Devil."The Bishop looked steadily at the cure, and repeated with authority, "God!”