Les Miserables Quotes

“As with stomachs, we should pity minds that do not eat.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“There comes an hour when protest no longer suffices; after philosophy there must be action; the strong hand finishes what the idea has sketched.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“France is great because she is France.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!”
― Do You Hear the People Sing Les Miserables

“Joy is the reflex of terror.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“When the nettle is young, the leaves make excellent greens; when it grows old it has filaments and fibers like hemp and flax. Cloth made from the nettle is as good as that made from hemp. Chopped up, the nettle is good for poultry; pounded, it is good for horned cattle. The seed of the nettle mixed with the fodder of animals gives a luster to their skin; the root, mixed with salt, produces a beautiful yellow dye. It makes, however, excellent hay, as it can be cut twice in a season. And what does the nettle need? very little soil, no care, no culture; except that the seeds fall as fast as they ripen, and it is difficult to gather them; that is all. If we would take a little pains, the nettle would be useful; we neglect it, and it becomes harmful. Then we kill it. How much men are like the nettle! My friends, remember this, that there are no weeds, and no worthless men, there are only bad farmers.”
― Victor Hugo

“What greater flood can there be than the flood of ideas? How quickly they submerge all that they set out to destroy, how rapidly do they create terrifying depths?”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“To commit the least possible sin is the law for man. To live without sin is the dream of an angel. Everything terrestrial is subject to sin. Sin is a gravitation.”
― Victor Hugo

“A shadow is hard to seize by the throat and dash to the ground.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“The most beautiful of altars, he said, is the soul of an unhappy creature consoled and thankfing God.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Slowly he took out the clothes in which, ten years beforem Cosette had left Montfermeil; first the little dress, then the black scarf, then the great heavy child's shoes Cosette could still almost have worn, so small was her foot, then the vest of very thich fustian, then the knitted petticoat, the the apron with pockets, then the wool stockings.... Then his venerable white head fell on the bed, this old stoical heart broke, his face was swallowed up, so to speak, in Cosette's clothes, and anybody who had passed along the staircase at that moment would have heard irrepressible sobbing.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“The scaffold is the accomplice of the executioner; it devours, it eats flesh, it drinks blood; the scaffold is a sort of monster fabricated by the judge and the carpenter, a spectre which seems to live with a horrible vitality composed of all the death which it has inflicted.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Tatkala semesta menciut menjadi sesosok makhluk, tatkala sesosok makhluk meluas bahkan sampai menjangkau Tuhan, maka itulah cinta.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Le propre de l'amour, c'est d'errer.”
― Victor Hugo

“As for us, we who do not believe what these women believe, but live like them by faith, never could look without a sort of tender and religious awe, a kind of pity full of envy, at those devoted beings, trembling yet confident-those humble yet august souls, who date to live on the brink of the great mystery, waiting between the world closed to them and heaven not yet opened; turned toward the daylight not yet seen, with only the happiness of thinking that they know where it is; their aspirations directed toward the abyss and the unknown, their gaze fixes on the motionless obscurity, kneeling, dismayed, stupefied, shuddering, and half carried of sometimes by the deep breath of Eternity.”
― Victor Hugo