“Great grief is a divine and terrible radiance which transfigures the wretched.”

“Every torment they had experienced was returned to them an intoxication. It seemed to them that the griefs , the sleeplessness, the tears, the anguish, the dismay, the despair, became caresses and radiance...and that their sorrows were so many servants preparing their joy. To have suffered, how good it is! Their grief made a halo around their happiness.”

“He sought...to transform the grief which looks down into the grave by showing it the grief which looks up to the stars.”

“Probity, sincerity, candor, conviction, the idea of duty, are things that, when in error, can turn hideous, but – even though hideous – remain great; their majesty, peculiar to the human conscience, persists in horror. They are virtues with a single vice – error. The pitiless, sincere joy of a fanatic in an act of atrocity preserves some mournful radiance that inspires veneration. Without suspecting it, Javert, in his dreadful happiness, was pitiful, like every ignorant man in triumph. Nothing could be more poignant and terrible than this face, which revealed what might be called all the evil of good. (pg. 291)”

“A wretched woman is more unfortunate than a wretched man, because she is an instrument of pleasure.”

“Great griefs exhaust. They discourage us with life. The man into whom they enter feels something taken from him. In youth, their visit is sad; later on, it is ominous.”

“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.”