Quotes from Les Misérables

“He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two.”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables

“Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables

“What Is Love? I have met in the streets a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables

“The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only.”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables

“To love another person is to see the face of God.”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables

“Not being heard is no reason for silence.”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables

“Laughter is sunshine, it chases winter from the human face.”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables

“To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables

“Those who do not weep, do not see.”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables

“Promise to give me a kiss on my brow when I am dead. --I shall feel it."

She dropped her head again on Marius' knees, and her eyelids closed. He thought the poor soul had departed. Eponine remained motionless. All at once, at the very moment when Marius fancied her asleep forever, she slowly opened her eyes in which appeared the sombre profundity of death, and said to him in a tone whose sweetness seemed already to proceed from another world:--

"And by the way, Monsieur Marius, I believe that I was a little bit in love with you.”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables

“If I speak, I am condemned.
If I stay silent, I am damned!”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables

“You ask me what forces me to speak? a strange thing; my conscience.”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables

“You who suffer because you love, love still more. To die of love, is to live by it.”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables

“Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables

“Life's great happiness is to be convinced we are loved.”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables

“A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is invisible labor.”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables

“There is nothing like a dream to create the future.”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables

“He was fond of books, for they are cool and sure friends”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables

“When love has fused and mingled two beings in a sacred and angelic unity, the secret of life has been discovered so far as they are concerned; they are no longer anything more than the two boundaries of the same destiny; they are no longer anything but the two wings of the same spirit. Love, soar.”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables

“A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in--what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables

“The future has several names. For the weak, it is impossible; for the fainthearted, it is unknown; but for the valiant, it is ideal.”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables

“The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables

“He fell to the seat, she by his side. There were no more words. The stars were beginning to shine. How was it that the birds sing, that the snow melts, that the rose opens, that May blooms, that the dawns whitens behind the black trees on the shivering summit of the hills?
One kiss, and that was all.

Both trembled, and they looked at each other in the darkness with brilliant eyes.

They felt neither the cool night, nor the cold stone, nor the damp ground, nor the wet grass; they looked at each other, and their hearts were full of thought. They had clasped hands, without knowing it.

She did not ask him; did not even think where and how he had managed to get into the garden. It seemed so natural to her that he should be there.

From time to time Marius’ knee touched Cosette’s. A touch that thrilled.
At times, Cosette faltered out a word. Her soul trembled on her lips like a drop of dew on a flower.

Gradually, they began to talk. Overflow succeeded to silence, which is fullness. The night was serene and glorious above their heads. These two beings, pure as spirits, told each other everything, their dreams, their frenzies, their ecstasies, their chimeras, their despondencies, how they had adored each other from afar, how they had longed for each other, their despair when they had ceased to see each other. They had confided to each other in an intimacy of the ideal, which already, nothing could have increased, all that was most hidden and most mysterious in themselves. They told each other, with a candid faith in their illusions, all that love, youth and the remnant of childhood that was theirs, brought to mind. These two hearts poured themselves out to each other, so that at the end of an hour, it was the young man who had the young girl’s soul and the young girl who had the soul of the young man. They interpenetrated, they enchanted, they dazzled each other.

When they had finished, when they had told each other everything, she laid her head on his shoulder, and asked him: "What is your name?"

My name is Marius," he said. "And yours?"
My name is Cosette.”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables

“There is something more terrible than a hell of suffering--a hell of boredom. ”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables

“Before him he saw two roads, both equally straight; but he did see two; and that terrified him--he who had never in his life known anything but one straight line. And, bitter anguish, these two roads were contradictory.”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables

“Love is the foolishness of men, and the wisdom of God.”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables

“...Nobody knows like a woman how to say things that are both sweet and profound. Sweetness and depth, this is all of woman; this is Heaven.”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables

“I have been loving you a little more every minute since this morning.”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables

“To die for lack of love is horrible. The asphyxia of the soul.”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables

About the author

Popular quotes

“Shekiba was born at the turn of the twentieth century, in an Afghanistan eyed lasciviously by Russia and Britain. Each would take turns promising to protect the borders they had just invaded, like a pedophile who professes to love his victim.
The borders between Afghanistan and India were drawn and redrawn from time to time, as if only penciled in. People belonged to one country and then the other, nationalities changing as often as the direction of the wind. For Great Britain and the Soviet Union, Afghanistan was the playing field for their "Great Game," the power struggle to control Central Asia. But the game was slowly coming to an end, the Afghan people ferociously resisting outside control. Chests expanded with pride when Afghans talked about their resilience.
But parts of Afghanistan were taken—little by little until its borders shrank in like a wool sweater left in the rain. Areas to the north like Samarkand and Bukhara had been lost to the Russian Empire. Chunks of the south were chipped away and the western front was pushed in over the years.”
― Nadia Hashimi, quote from The Pearl That Broke Its Shell

“Weren't you scared?" I ask.
"Yes. But it was a good scared."
"There's a good kind?"
"Oh, yes." Her voice drops so low I have to strain to hear. "Orlin made me scared all the time. Scared I would starve. Scared I would get too cold. Scared he would hurt me again or get so mad he'd throw me to one of the men. That was nasty bad scared." She pauses, scuffing her boots against the floor. "But you never hit me, even though I'm your slave... You always feed me. You call me my true name. Now when I'm scared, it's not because of meanness. And today, I chose my own scared. It's always a good scared, when you get to pick it your own self.”
― Rae Carson, quote from The Bitter Kingdom

“They passed the Gates of Thermopylae the following day and Alexander stopped to visit the tombs of the Spartan soldiers who had fallen one hundred and forty years previously during their battle with the Persian invaders. He read the simple inscription in Laconian dialect that commemorated their ultimate sacrifice and he stood in silence listening to the wind blowing in from the sea.
How ephemeral is the destiny of man!’ he exclaimed. ‘All that is left of the thunder of a momentous clash which shook the whole world and an act of heroism worthy of Homer’s verses are these few lines. All is quiet now.”
― Valerio Massimo Manfredi, quote from Alexander: Child of a Dream

“I take a deep breath before jumping from the edge of the skywalk and lurching into the air toward him. To my surprise, Trey jumps from his side at the same time, meeting me in the air between the broken pieces of skywalk. His arms go around me, hugging me to him while we fall toward the reservoir of crystal-blue water far below.”
― Amy A. Bartol, quote from Sea of Stars

“And sometimes when you witness a miracle it makes you believe that anything is possible.”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from How to Fall in Love

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

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