“The book the reader has now before his eyes - from one end to the other, in its whole and in its details, whatever the omissions, the exceptions, or the faults - is the march from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from the false to the true, from night to day, from appetite to conscience, from rottenness to life, from brutality to duty, from Hell to Heaven, from nothingness to God. Starting point: matter; goal: the soul. Hydra at the beginning, angel at the end.”

“I have a dream my life would be. So different from this hell I'm living. So different now from what it seem. Now life has killed the dream I dreamed."*Fantine”

“Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. Itis your soul that I buy from you; I withdraw it from black thoughts andthe spirit of perdition, and I give it to God.”

“And must I now begin to doubt - who never doubted all these years? My heart is stone, and still it trembles. The world I have known is lost in the shadows. Is he from heaven or from hell? And does he know, that granting me my life today, this man has killed me, even so.- Javert”

“A reflection from this heaven shone upon the bishop. But it was also a luminous transparency, for this heaven was within him: this heaven was his conscience.”

“One can no more prevent the mind from returning to an idea than the sea from returning to a shore. In the case of the sailor, this is called the tide; in the case of the guilty, its is called remorse. God upheaves the soul as well as the ocean.”

“To know how to distinguish the agitation arising from covetousness, from the agitation arising from principles, to fight the one and aid the other, in this lies the genius and the power of great revolutionary leaders.”