Great Throughts Treasury

"Geometry is a harmony."

"Give a creature the useless, deprive him of the necessary, and you have the gamin."

"Give to the people who toil and suffer, for whom this world is hard and bad, the belief that there is a better made for them. Scatter Gospels among the villages, a Bible for every cottage."

"Giving is a form of superiority. Hope would be the greatest human force if desperation did not exist."

"Go out in the world and work like money doesn't matter, Sing as if no one is listening, Love as if you have never been hurt, and Dance as if no one is watching"

"God became a man, granted. The devil became a woman."

"God created the coquette as soon as he had made the fool."

"God created the flirt as soon as he made the fool."

"God creates by intuition; man creates by inspiration, strengthened by observation."

"God has set his intentions in the flowers, in the dawn, in the spring--it is his will that we should love."

"God made the cat so that man might have the pleasure of caressing the tiger."

"God manifests himself to us in the first degree through the life of the universe, and in the second degree through the thought of man. The second manifestation is not less holy than the first. The first is named Nature, the second is named Art."

"Great edifices, like great mountains, are the work of ages."

"Great buildings, like great mountains, are the work of centuries."

"Great perils have this beauty that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers."

"Habit is the nursery of errors."

"Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come."

"Happiness is serious ... its smile is nearer tears than mirth."

"Happiness lies for those who cry, those who hurt, those who have searched, and those who have tried for only they can appreciate the importance of people who have touched their lives."

"Have no fear of robbers or murderers. They are external dangers, petty dangers. We should fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices the real murders. The great dangers are within us. Why worry about what threatens our heads or purses? Let us think instead of what threatens our souls."

"He as the bird perched for an instant on the too frail branch which she feels bending beneath, but sings away all the same, knowing she has wings."

"He did things which appeared useless — a sign of attentive forethought."

"He does not weep who does not see."

"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."

"He had been married and had had offspring. He did not know what had become of his wife and children. He had lost them the way he might have lost his handkerchief."

"He had nothing in his favor except that he was a drunkard."

"He had, they said, tasted in succession all the apples of the tree of knowledge, and, whether from hunger or disgust, had ended by tasting the forbidden fruit."

"He is asleep. Though his mettle was sorely tried, he lived, and when he lost his angel, died. It happened calmly, on its own, the way the night comes when day is done."

"He is the best gentleman that is the son of his own deserts, and not the degenerated heir of another’s virtue."

"He left her. She was dissatisfied with him. He had preferred to incur her anger rather than cause her pain. He had kept all the pain for himself."

"He looked like a caryatid on vacation; he was supporting nothing but his daydreams."

"He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two."

"He plainly perceived the truth: from then on she would be the basis of his life, so long as she were there, so long as he had her with him, he would need nothing except her and fear nothing except on her account. He did not even feel cold, even though he had taken off his coat to cover her."

"He reached for his pocket, and found there, only reality"

"He smiled habitually as a matter of good business and tried to be polite to everybody, even to the beggar to whom he was refusing a penny."

"He stirred up from the bottom of his heart all his hatred, all his wickedness; and he discovered, with the cool eye of a physician examining a patient, that this hatred, this wickedness, were but vitiated love-that love, the source of every virtue in man, turned to things horrible in the heart of a priest-and that a man constituted as he was, by making himself a priest made himself a demon."

"He therefore turned to mankind only with regret. His cathedral was enough for him. It was peopled with marble figures of kings, saints and bishops who at least did not laugh in his face and looked at him with only tranquility and benevolence. The other statues, those of monsters and demons, had no hatred for him – he resembled them too closely for that. It was rather the rest of mankind that they jeered at. The saints were his friends and blessed him; the monsters were his friends and kept watch over him. He would sometimes spend whole hours crouched before one of the statues in solitary conversation with it. If anyone came upon him then he would run away like a lover surprised during a serenade."

"He thought himself stronger than he was and believed he could play mouse with a lion."

"He walked with his head down for the first time in his life, and for the first time in his life as well, with his hands behind his back. Until that day, of Napoleon's two attitudes, Javert had assumed one, the one that expresses resolution, arms folded across breast; the one that expresses uncertainty, hands behind back, was unknown to him."

"He was experiencing what the earth may experience at the moment when it is opened by the plow so wheat may be sown; it feels only the wound; the thrill of the seed and joy of the fruit do not come until later."

"He was not willing for there to be any man on earth without a country."

"He was one of those children so deserving of pity above all others, who have fathers and mothers and yet are orphans."

"He who abandons the field is beaten."

"He who does not weep does not see."

"He who has not been a determined accuser during prosperity should hold his peace in adversity."

"He who is not capable of enduring poverty is not capable of being free."

"He who is not free is not a man."

"He who is not master of his own thoughts is not accountable for his own deeds."

"He who opens a school door, closes a prison."

"He who reads, thinks; he who thinks, reasons."