“The duty of the inn-keeper,is to sell to the first comer, stews, repose, light, fire, dirtysheets, a servant, lice, and a smile; to stop passers-by, to empty smallpurses, and to honestly lighten heavy ones; to shelter travelling familiesrespectfully: to shave the man, to pluck the woman, to pick the childclean; to quote the window open, the window shut, the chimney-corner,the arm-chair, the chair, the ottoman, the stool, the feather-bed, the mattressand the truss of straw; to know how much the shadow uses up themirror, and to put a price on it; and, by five hundred thousand devils, tomake the traveller pay for everything, even for the flies which his dogeats!”

“A cannonball travels only two thousand miles an hour; light travels two hundred thousand miles a second. Such is the superiority of Jesus Christ over Napoleon.”

“Blessed be Providence which has given to each his toy: the doll to the child, the child to the woman, the woman to the man, the man to the devil.”

“What is more melancholy and more profound than to see a thousand objects for the first and the last time? To travel is to be born and to die at every instant.”

“A chair is not a caste.”

“Certainly we talk to ourselves; there is no thinking being who has not experienced that. One could even say that the word is never a more magnificent mystery than when, within a man, it travels from his thought to his conscience and returns from his conscience to his thought. This is the only sense of the words, so often used in this chapter, “he said,” “he exclaimed”; we say to ourselves, we speak to ourselves, we exclaim within ourselves, without breaking the external silence. There is great tumult within; everything within us speaks, except the tongue. The realities of the soul, though not visible and palpable, are nonetheless realities. (pg. 226)”

“The driver, a black silhouette upon his box, whipped up his bony horses. Icy silence in the coach. Marius, motionless, his body braced in the corner of the carriage, his head dropping down upon his breast, his arms hanging, his legs rigid, appeared to await nothing now but a coffin; Jean Valjean seemed made of shadow, and Javert of stone.”