“The world is like Olympus - even a thief is accepted in it if he is also a god.”

“Happy, even in anguish, is he to whom God has given a soul worthy of love and grief! He who has not seen the things of this world, and the heart of men in this double light, has seen nothing, and knows noting of the truth.”

“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.”

“The reduction of the universe to a single being, the expansion of a single being even to God, this is love.”

“He did not study God; he was dazzled by him.”

“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.”

“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”