“The animal is ignorant of the fact that he knows. The man is aware of the fact that he is ignorant.”

“Man is not a circle with a single center; he is an ellipse with two focii. Facts are one, ideas are the other.”

“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.”

“Humanity is identity. All men are the same clay. No difference, here below at least, in predestination. The same darkness before, the same flesh during, the same ashes after life. But ignorance, mixed with the human composition, blackens it. This incurable ignorance possesses the heart of man, and there becomes evil.”

“It is a shame that I am ignorant, otherwise I would quote to you a mass of things; but I know nothing.”

“The reflection of a fact is in itself a fact.”

“Without knowing it, Javert in his awful happiness was deserving of pity, like every ignorant man who triumphs. Nothing could have been more poignant or more heartrending than that countenance on which was inscribed all the evil in what is good.”