Les Miserables

I just finished reading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo and I absolutely loved it. Sure it was long and there were times when I wanted to take a break and read something else but I persevered and I'm glad I did. It really is true that because of all of the background information and detailed character description, by the end of the book you feel like you really know the characters. I love reading classics because so many of them have such moral messages. I love books that are uplifting, hopeful, powerfully written, and that also keep you interested. There were so many excellent quotes in this book and I wanted to write down some of my favorites.

"Have no fear of robbers or murderers. Such dangers are without, and are but petty. We should fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices the real murderers. The great dangers are within us. What matters it what threatens our heads or our purses? Let us think only of what threatens our souls." (Fantine, Book 1, Ch. 7)

"Mothers' arms are made of tenderness, and sweet sleep blesses the child who lies therein." (Fantine, Book 4, Ch. 1)

"The child opened its large blue eyes, like its mother's, and saw--what? Nothing, everything, with that serious and sometimes severe air of little children, which is one of the mysteries of their shining innocence before our shadowy virtues. One would say that they felt themselves to be angels, and knew us to be humans." (Fantine, Book 4, Ch. 1)

"Love partakes of the soul itself. It is of the same nature. Like it, it is a divine spark; like it, it is incorruptible, indivisible, imperishable. It is a point of fire which is within us, which is immortal and infinite, which nothing can limit and which nothing can extinguish. We feel it burn even in the marrow of our bones, and we see it radiate even to the depths of the sky." (Saint-Denis, Book 5, Ch. 4)

I loved this next one, due to my own incredibly short courtship with Joe (*Cough*...six weeks).

"There is a God for these drunkards who are called lovers. Blind, Marius had followed the route which he would have chosen had he seen clearly. Love had bandaged his eyes, to lead him where? To Paradise." (Jean Valjean, Book 7, Ch. 2)

"We are never done with conscience...It is bottomless, being God. We cast into this pit the labour of our whole life, we cast in our fortune, we cast in our riches, we cast in our success, we cast in our liberty or our country, we cast in our well-being, we cast in our peace of mind, we cast in our happiness. More! more! more! Empty the vase! turn out the urn! We must at last cast in our heart." (Jean Valjean, Book 6, Ch. 4)

"The book which the reader has now before his eyes is, from one end to the other, in its whole and in its details, whatever may be the intermissions, the exceptions, or the defaults, the march from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from the false to the true, from night to day, from appetite to conscience, from rottenness to life, from brutality to duty, from Hell to Heaven, from nothingness to God. Starting point: matter; goal: the soul. Hydra at the beginning, angel at the end." (Jean Valjean, Book 1, Ch. 20)

Read this book if you haven't already! Now, I really want to see the show again. Someday...