Jack’s Reviews > Les Misérables > Status Update

“Cosette, the time has come to tell you the name of your mother. Her name was Fantine. Remember that name…She suffered a great deal. And loved you very much.

“So I am going away, my children. Love each other dearly always. There is scarcely anything else in the world but that: to love one another.”

“This convict, this desperate man, I have pursued to the point of persecution, and he has had me beneath his feet, and could have avenged himself, and ought to have done so…in granting me my life, in sparing me, what has he done? His duty? No. Something more. And I, in sparing him in turn, what have I done. My duty? No. Something more.”

Victor Hugo giving a shout out to John Brown as a heroic martyr for progress was a surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one.

“Citizens, in the future there shall be neither darkness nor thunderbols, neither ferocious ignorance nor blood for blood…In the future no man will slay his fellow, the earth will be radiant, the human race will love. It will come, citizens, that day when all shall be concord, harmony, light, joy, and life; it will come, and it is so that it may come that we are going to die.”

“Night fell. Paris seemed more and more ominously lit by the stupendous flame of the uprising.”

“By the way, you know you’ve promised me something?”

Marius fumbled in his pocket. He had nothing in the world but the five francs…he took it and put it in Eponine’s hand.

She opened her fingers and let the coin fall to the ground, then, looking at him glumly, “I don’t want your money,” she said.

“During that seemingly indifferent time, a vague revolutionary thrill was noticeable…a mere hint of mystery threatened the established order of things—a sign revolutionary in the highest degree.”

“They declared themselves the Friends of the ABC [pronounced ah-bay-say]. The abaissé [the abased] were the people. They wished to raise them up. One pun that is not funny. Puns can be serious in politics.”

🎵Waterloo, I was defeated, you won the war.
Waterloo, promise to love you forevermore.🎶

“So he had to go to Arras, save the false Jean Valjean, turn in the true one. Alas! That was the greatest sacrifice, the most poignant victory, the final step to be taken, but he had to do it. Painful fate! He could only enter into holiness in God’s eyes, by returning to the infamy of men’s.”