les miserables {part two}

more excerpts from my first read of my 2013 reading list.  enjoy part one, also.

{part two}

"however, he asked himself several questions and gave several answers:  'after what he has done for me, if he were a thief, would i save him?  i would anyway.  if he were an assassin, would i save him?  i would anyway.  since he is a saint, shall i save him?  absolutely.'"

"laughter is sunshine; it chases winter from the human face."

"and then he reflected that two houses of god had received him in succession at the two critical moments of his life, the first when every door was closed and human society rejected him; the second, when human society was once more howling on his track, and prison once more gaped for him; and that, had it not been for the first, he would have fallen back into crime, and had it not been for the second, into punishment.  his whole heart melted in gratitude and he loved more and more."

"this little boy never felt so happy as when in the street.  for him the pavement was not so hard as the heart of his mother."

"'i do not know whether it is that i no longer understand french, or that you no longer speak it; but the fact is i do not understand you.'"

"the doctor and the cure had been called.  the doctor had come too late, the cure had come too late.  the son too had come too late.  by the dim candlelight, they could see on the colonel's pale cheek a large tear, fallen from his lifeless eye.  the eye was glazed, but the tear was not dry.  the tear was for his son's delay."

"poverty is like everything else.  it gradually becomes endurable.  it ends by taking shape and becoming fixed.  you vegetate, that is to say you develop in some squalid way, sufficient for existence.  this is how marius pontmercy's life was arranged."

"poverty in youth, when it succeeds, is magnificent in that it turns the whole will toward effort and the whole soul toward aspiration."

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

"right is just and true.  the property of right is that it is always beautiful and pure."

"what love begins can only be finished by god."

"you who suffer because you love, love still more.  to die of love is to live by it."

"labor cannot be a law without being a right."

"oh, if the good hearts had the fat purses, how much better everything would be!"

"'you don't need to be hungry, to eat one's cake.'"

"not to want any more of one's cake is no reason for giving it away."

"jean valjean's generosity toward him, javert, overwhelmed him."