Words of Wisdom from Victor Hugo

After months of reading and not reading, I have finally consumed all 1463 pages of Les Miserables. Here are some of the things I walked away with.

On war budgets: "At six francs per shot,or three hundred million a year, gone up in smoke. This is only one item. Meanwhile, the poor are dying of hunger." (p. 367)

On the Spanish War: "It had this sad fate, that it invoked the image of neither a great war nor great politics." (p. 368)

On Paris: "Paris is the synonym of Cosmos. Paris is Athens, Rome, Sybaris, Jerusalem, Pantin. All civilizations are there in abridged edition, all barbaric eras too. Paris would be annoyed to lose its guillotine." (p. 590)

On love at first sight: "The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories that it has come to be disbelieved. Few people dare say nowadays that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet that is the way love begins, and only that way. The rest is only the rest, and comes afterwards. Nothing is more real than the great shocks that two souls give each other in exchanging this spark." (p. 896)

From the mouths of the inebriated: "Who's been unhooking the stars without my permission to put them on the table in the shape of candles?" (p. 1095)

On Equality: "Equality has an organ: free and compulsory education. The right to the alphabet, we must begin by that. The primary school obligatory for everyone, the higher school offered to everyone, such is the law. From identical schools spring an equal society. Yes, education!" (p. 1191)

On Revolutions: "To go to war at every summons and whenever Utopia desires it is not the part of the people. The nations do not have always at at every instant the temperament of heroes and martyrs." (p. 1239)

On the power of wine: "He returned...very thoughtful, a little cooled toward robbery, which had nearly ruined him, but turning with only the greater affection toward wine, which had just saved him." (p. 1331-2)

On wedding dates: "Marriages on Mardi Gras/Produce no ingrate brats." (p. 1365)

On Love (again): "To love or to have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life. To love is a consummation." (p. 1382)

On Dying: "The agony of deat may be said to meander. It comes and goes, moes on toward the grave, and turns back towards life. There is a groping in the act of dying." (p. 1458)