Literary Loveliness

While discussing grace in my Intro to the Christian Faith class, we were assigned to read Victor Hugo's Les Misérables. This was most fortuitous as a ppreparationfor going to see RHS do the musical version next month (Yaaaay! Portland!) and because awesome literature makes me happy. This is awesome literature. These are some of the quotes that struck me the most. Some are simply beautiful others merely resonate with my current mindset. I'll let you determine which is which.

"He plainly perceived this truth, the basis of his life henceforth that so long as she should be alive, so long as he should have her with him, he should need nothing except for her, and fear nothing save on her account."

"Her happiness was the aim of my life. Now, God may beckon me away. Cosette, you are happy; my time is full."

"It is all over. I shall never see her more. She is a smile which has passed over me. I am going to enter into the night without even seeing her again. Oh! a minute, an instant, and then to die! It is nothing to die, but it is dreadful to die without seeing her. She would smile upon me, she would say a word to me. Would that harm anybody? No, it is over, forever. Here I am, all alone. My God! my God! I shall never see her again!"

"These two beings, who loved each other so exclusively, and with so touching a love, and who had lived so long for each other, were now suffering by each other, and through each other; without speaking of it, without harsh feeling, and smiling the while."

"And then, is it not when the fall is lowest that charity ought to be greatest?"

"He fell upon the seat, she by his side. There were no more words. The stars were beginning to shine. How was it that their lips met? How is it that the birds sing, that the snow melts, that the rose opens, that May blooms, that the dawn whitens behind the black trees on the shimmering summit of hills?"

"The smile of the woman whom we love has a brilliancy which we can see by night."

"It was all over with him. Marius loved a woman. His destiny was entering upon the unknown"

"Alas, the supreme ordeal, let us say rather, the only ordeal, is the loss of the beloved being."

"Love each other dearly always. There is scarcely anything else in the world but that: to love one another."