Quotes about Struggle

Alas! that was the greatest of sacrifices, the most poignant of victories, the final step to be taken, but he must do it. Mournful destiny! he could only enter into the sanctity in the eyes of God, by returning into infamy in the eyes of men!

War has frightful beauties which we have not concealed; it has also, we acknowledge, some hideous features. One of the most surprising is the prompt stripping of the bodies of the dead after the victory. The dawn which follows a battle always rises on naked corpses.

What is this history of Fantine? It is society purchasing a slave. From whom? From misery. From hunger, cold, isolation, destitution. A dolorous bargain. A soul for a morsel of bread. Misery offers; society accepts.

As long as there are misérables there will be a cloud on the horizon that can become a phantom and a phantom that can become Marat.

It is the same with wretchedness as with everything else. It ends by becoming bearable.

It sometimes happens that, even contrary to principles, even contrary to liberty, equality, and fraternity, even contrary to the universal vote, even contrary to the government, by all for all, from the depths of its anguish, of its discouragements and its destitutions, of its fevers, of its distresses, of its miasmas, of its ignorances, of its darkness, that great and despairing body, the rabble, protests against, and that the populace wages battle against, the people. Beggars

The galleys make the convict what he is; reflect upon that, if you please.

A harmony established contrary to sense is often more onerous than a war.

Peoples, like planets, possess the right to an eclipse. And all is well, provided that the light returns and that the eclipse does not degenerate into night.

He saw nothing of all this. People who are crushed do not look behind them. They know but too well the evil fate which follows them.

with the exception of wars of liberation, everything that armies do is by foul means.

There is one thing sadder than having no money to buy bread; that is having nothing with which to buy medicine.