Les Miserables - Bilingual quotes that celebrate the beauty of language, showcasing meaningful expressions in two unique perspectives.

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.

What took place next in the fate of M. Myriel?

So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding the element of

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

But that which pleases us in people who are rising pleases us less in the case of people who are falling. We only love the fray so long as there is danger, and in any case, the combatants of the first hour have alone the right to be the exterminators of the last. He who has not been a stubborn accuser in prosperity should hold his peace in the face of ruin. The denunciator of success is the only legitimate executioner of the fall. As for us, when Providence intervenes and strikes, we let it work.

Ah! indeed he must not be mounted. It does not suit his ideas to be a saddle-horse. Every one has his ambition. 'Draw? Yes. Carry? No.' We must suppose that is what he said to himself.

Does not this comprehend all, in fact? and what is there left to desire beyond it? A little garden in which to walk, and immensity in which to dream. At

The real human division is this: the luminous and the shady. To diminish the number of the shady, to augment the number of the luminous,-that is the object. That is why we cry: Education! science! To teach reading, means to light the fire; every syllable spelled out sparkles.

How pretty it is here!It was an awful hovel, but she felt free.

Society absolutely must look into these things since they are its own work.

It is the property of grief to cause the childish side of man to reappear.

Youth, even in its sorrows, always possesses its own peculiar radiance.

It is one of the poignant anxieties of the thinker that he sees the shadow resting on the human soul, and that he gropes in darkness without being able to awaken that slumbering Progress.

Ignominy thirsts for consideration.

If there did not exist some one who loved, the sun would become extinct.

Never, even among animals, does the creature born to be a dove change into an osprey. That is only to be seen among men.

Slaying wealth is not the same thing as dividing it.

The memory of an absent being kindles in the darkness of the heart; the more it has disappeared, the more it beams; the gloomy and despairing soul sees this light on its horizon; the star of the inner night.

Happy, even in the midst of anguish, is he to whom God has given a soul worthy of love and of unhappiness! He who has not viewed the things of this world and the heart of man under this double light has seen nothing and knows nothing of the true.

A harmony established contrary to sense is often more onerous than a war.

Factions are blind men who aim correctly.

Everyone has noticed the taste which cats have for pausing and lounging between the two leaves of a half-shut door. Who is there who has not said to a cat, "Do come in!" There are men who, when an incident stands half-open before them, have the same tendency to halt in indecision between two resolutions, at the risk of getting crushed through the abrupt closing of the adventure by fate. The over-prudent, cats as they are, and because they are cats, sometimes incur more danger than the audacious.

Sister, never a precaution on the part of the priest, against his fellow-man. That which his fellow does, God permits. Let us confine ourselves to prayer, when we think that a danger is approaching us. Let us pray, not for ourselves, but that our brother may not fall into sin on our account.

It is necessary, for the sake of the forward march of the human race, that there should be proud lessons of courage permanently on the heights. Daring deeds dazzle history and are one of man's great sources of light. The dawn dares when it rises. To attempt, to brave, to persist, to persevere, to be faithful to one's self, to grasp fate bodily, to astound catastrophe by the small amount of fear that it occasions us, now to affront unjust power, again to insult drunken victory, to hold one's position, to stand one's ground; that is the example which nations need, that is the light which electrifies them.

Nothing could be so poignant and so terrible as this face, wherein was displayed all that may be designated as the evil of the good.

Let us fight.Let us fight, but let us discriminate. The characteristic of truth is never to be extreme. What need has it to exaggerate? There is that which needs to be destroyed, and there is that which simply needs to be elucidated and examined. Well intentioned and serious examination, that is a force to be reckoned with! Let us not put to the torch where it is enough to bring light.

I am not enthusiastic over your Jesus, who preaches renunciation and sacrifice to the last extremity. 'Tis the counsel of an avaricious man to beggars. Renunciation; why? Sacrifice; to what end? I do not see one wolf immolating himself for the happiness of another wolf. Let us stick to nature, then.

When many varied sensations have agitated the day, when various matters preoccupy the mind, one falls asleep once, but not a second time.

To confide is sometimes to deliver into a person's power.

To confide is sometime to deliver into a person's power