“He had to accept the fate of every newcomer to a small town where there are plenty of tongues that gossip and few minds that think.”

“M. Myriel had to undergo the fate of every newcomer in a little town, where there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think.”

“where there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think.”

“He had a small but well stocked library. He loved books; books are a remote but reliable friend.”

“This Boulatruelle was a man in bad odour with the people of the neighbourhood; he was too respectful, too humble, prompt to doff his cap to everybody; he always trembled and smiled in the presence of the gendarmes, was probably in secret connection with robber-bands, said the gossips, and suspected of lying in wait in the hedge corners at nightfall. He had nothing in his favour except that he was a drunkard.”

“An increase of tenderness always ended by boiling over and turning to indignation. He was at the point where we seek to adopt a course, and to accept what tears us apart.”

“Sometimes he dug in his garden; again, he read or wrote. He had but one word for both these kinds of toil; he called them gardening. "The mind is a garden," said he.”