“If you ask the great city, ‘Who is this person?,’ she will answer, ‘He is my child.”

“Do not ask the name of the person who asks you for a bed for a night. He whose name is a burden to him needs shelter more than any one.”

“You need not tell me who you are. This is not my house; it is the house of Christ. It does not ask any comer whether he has a name but whether he has an affliction.”

“Who can be sure that Jean Valjean had not been on the verge of losing heart and giving up the struggle? In loving he recovered his strength. But the truth is that he was no less vulnerable than Cosette. He protected her and she sustained him. Thanks to him she could go forward into life, and thanks to her he could continue virtous. He was the child's support and she his mainstay. Sublime, unfathomable marvel of the balance of destiny!”

“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.”

“In fact, he who has only beheld the misery of man has seen nothing; the misery of woman is what he must see; he who has seen only the misery of woman has seen nothing; he must see the misery of the child.”

“You have knocked at every door?" she asked."Yes.""Have you knocked at that one there?""No.""Knock there.”