On waking one morning she saw in her window two vases full of flowers. One was in a bright, handsome crystal vase but cracked; it had let all the water escape, and the flowers it contained were faded. The other vase was of earthenware, rude and common, but had kept all the water, so that its flowers remained fresh and blooming.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
After all, nature was not mute in the poor fellow; deformed as he was, his heart nevertheless had feeling like any other man's. He mused on the wretched lot that Providence had meted out to him--how woman, and the joys of love, were destined everlastingly to pass under his eye without his ever being more than a witness to the happiness of others.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Mlle. Vaubois perfect in her way, was the ermine of stupidity without a single stain of intelligence.
Les Miserables
The day is vulgar and deserves only closed shutters. Proper people light up their wit when the zenith lights up its stars.
Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo
Nothing is so stifling as symmetry. Symmetry is boredom, the quintessence of mourning. Despair yawns. There is something more terrible than a hell of suffering--a hell of boredom.
Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo
An army is a strange composite masterpiece, in which strength results from an enormous sum total of utter weaknesses. Thus only can we explain a war waged by humanity against humanity in spite of humanity.
Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo
But this great England will be offended at what we say here. Even after her 1688 and our 1789, she still has the feudal illusion. She believes in hereditary right, and in the hierarchy. Its people, surpassed by none in might and glory, values itself as a nation, not as a people. So much so that as a people they subordinate themselves willingly, and take a Lord for a head. Workmen, they submit to being scorned; soldiers, they submit to whippings. We remember that at the battle of Inkerman a sergeant who, so it seems, had saved the army, could not be mentioned by Lord Raglan, since the English military hierarchy did not permit any hero below the rank of officer to be mentioned in a report.
Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo
Death is the entrance into great light.
Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo
The pitiless, sincere joy of a fanatic in an act of atrocity preserves some mournful radiance that inspires veneration. Nothing could be more poignant and terrible than this face, which revealed what might be called all the evil of good.
Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo
To err is human, to loaf is Parisian.
Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo
In Marius's opinion, to accept would make his position better and worse at the same time; he would gain in comfort and lose in dignity; it was a total and beautiful misfortune given up for ugly and ridiculous constraint; something like a blind man gaining one eye. He refused.
Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo
The nineteenth century is poison. The first whippersnapper you meet wears his goat's beard, thinks he is very clever, and tosses out his old relatives.
Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo
There is a moment when girls bloom in a twinkling, and become roses all at once. Yesterday we left them children, today we find them disturbing.
Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo
That's life, it's often our best friends who make us fall.
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, by Victor Hugo
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