Love & Lignin

“The true division of humanity is this: those filled with light and those filled with darkness. To reduce the number of those filled with darkness, to increase the number of those filled with light, that is the goal. That is why we cry: education! knowledge! science! To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable spelled out sparkles.” Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, p810

“Marius and Cosette were in the dark in relation to each other. They did not speak to each other, did not greet each other, did not know each other; they saw each other; and like the stars in the sky that are separated by millions of miles, they lived on looking at each other.” Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, p738

“Marius said nothing; for a second [Éponine] remained silent, too, then she cried: ‘If I wanted to, but, I could make you pretty happy!’” Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, p718

“What was there this time in the young girl’s gaze? Marius could not have said. It was nothing and everything. It was a strange lightning flash. … There comes a day when every young girl peeks out like this. Woe to the man who happens to be there!” Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, p581

“Her eyes were a deep celestial blue, but this veiled azure still held only the gaze of a child. She looked at Marius with indifference, as she would have looked at a toddler running around under the sycamores or at the marble vase that was casting a shadow over the bench; and Marius for his part continued his promenade thinking of something else… He no longer took any notice of them. He thought no more of the girl now that she was beautiful than he had thought of her when she was ugly.” Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, p581

“There is an instant, the blink of an eye, when girls blossom suddenly into roses. Yesterday when you left them they were still children, today you find them downright disturbing.” Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, p580

“For more than a year, Marius had noticed in a deserted walk of the Luxembourg gardens, the walk that runs alongside the parapet of a plant nursery, a man and a very young girl, almost always seated side by side on the same bench at the most solitary end of the path, on the rue de l’Ouest side. …So Marius saw them practically every day, at the same time, for the first year. He found the man to his liking, but the girl rather dismal.” Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, pp578-579

“To err is human, to stroll, Parisian.” “Les Misérables” by Victor Hugo, p541