Good Lines: Les Miserables

Some of the sections I flagged when I read the book a year or so ago:

"Granted the supposition that in every man there is contained a species of the animal kingdom, we may at once place Inspector Javert. The Asturian peasants believe that in every wolf-litter there is a dog-whelp which the mother kills, because otherwise when it grows larger it will devour the rest of her young. Endow this dog with a human face, and you have Javert."

"An old woman who lived in the house taught her the art of living in penury. There are two stages - living on little, and living on nothing. They are like two rooms, the first dark, the second pitch-black."

"The 'chief tenant' had died since the days of Jean Valjean, and had been replaced by another exactly like her. As some philosopher has remarked, there is never any shortage of old women. The replacement was a Madame Bourgon and there was nothing remarkable about her except the dynasty of three parrots who in succession had ruled over her heart."

"Later, when he was in bed and on the verge of sleep, in that hazy moment when thought, like the fabulous bird that changes into a fish in order to cross the sea, takes on the form of dreaming in order to cross into slumber, this notion returned to him and he murmured confusedly: 'After all, it was very like what La Rubaudiere tells us about goblins. Was it a goblin, perhaps?'"

"'My poor boy, sheer laziness has started you on the most arduous of careers. You call yourself a loafer, but you will have to work harder than most men. Have you ever seen a treadmill? It is a thing to beware of, a cunning and diabolical device; if it catches you by the coat-tails it swallows you up. Another name for it is idleness. You should change your ways while there is still time. Otherwise you're done for; in a very little while you will be caught in the machinery, and then there's no more hope. No rest for the idler; nothing but the iron grip of incessant struggle. You don't want to earn your living honestly, do a job, fulfill a duty; the thought of being like other men bores you. But the end is the same. Work is the law of life, and to reject it as boredom is to submit to it as torment...'"