Spoken by Enjolras
Before General Lamarque's death
"France needs no Corsica to be great. France is great because she is France. Quia nominor leo." (To Marius in Marius, Book 4, Chapter V)
"Citizen, my mother is the Republic." (To Marius in Marius, Book 4, Chapter V)
"We must know where we are and who we can rely on. If we want fighting men, we must make them. Have the wherewithal to strike. That can do no harm. Travelers have a better chance of a goring when there are bulls in the road than when there are none. So let's take a little count of the herd. How many of us are there? We cannot put the work off till tomorrow. Revolutionaries should always be ready; progress has no time to lose. Beware the unexpected.We have to go over all the seams we've made and see if they hold." (To the Friends of the ABC in Saint-Denis, Book 1 Chapter VI)
"You to indoctrinate republicans! You, to warm up, in the name of principles, hearts that have grown cold!" (To Grantaire in Saint-Denis, Book 1 Chapter VI)
Building of the barricades
"You're spending your wrath uselessly. Economize your ammunition. We don't fire out of rank--not with the soul any more than the gun." (To Bahorel in Saint-Denis, Book 11, Chapter IV)
"To the barricades!" (Running through the streets in Saint-Denis, Book 11, Chapter V)
"This is the place for intoxication, not drunkeness. Don't dishonor the barricade!" (To Grantaire in Saint-Denis, Book 12, Chapter III)
"Grantaire, you're incapable of belief, of though, of will, of life, and of death." (To Grantaire in Saint-Denis, Book 12, Chapter III)
"When there are enough [muskets] for the men, we'll give them to the children." (To Gavroche in Saint-Denis Book 12, Chapter IV)
At the barricade
"Spy, we are judges, not assassins." (To Javert in Saint-Denis, Book 12, Chapter VII)
"He killed, that is why I killed him. I was forced to do it, for the insurrection must have its discipline. Assassination is still a greater crime here than elsewhere; we are under the eyes of the Revolution, we are the preists of the Republic, we are the sacramental host of duty, and no one can defame our combat. I therefore judged and condemned that man to death. As for myself, compelled to do what I have done, but abhorring it, I have judged myself." (To the men at the barricade in Saint-Denis, Book 12, Chapter VIII)
"In executing that man, I obeyed necessity; but necessity is a monster of the old world. the name of necessity is Fatality. Now the law of progress is that monsters disappear before angels, and that Fatality vanish before Fraternity." (To the men at the barricade in Saint-Denis, Book 12, Chapter VIII)
"This is a bad time to pronounce the word 'love.' No matter, I pronounce it, and I glorify it. Love, yours is the future. Death, I use you, but I hate you. Citizens, in the future there shall be neither darkness nor thunderbolts, neither ferocious ignorance nor blood for blood. As Satar shall be nore more, so Michael shall be no more. 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." (To the men at the barricade in Saint-Denis, Book 12, Chapter VIII)
"Who is there who has courage here? Who is going to raise the flag onto the barricade?" (To the men at the barricade in Saint-Denis, Book 14, Chapter I)
"Citizens! This is the example the old give the young. We hesitated, he came! We fell back, he advanced! This is what those who tremble with old age teach those who tremble with fear! This patriarch is noble in the sight of the country. He has had a long life and a magnificent death! Now let us protect his corpse, let everyone defend this old man dead as he would defend his father living and let his presence among us make the barricade impregnable!" (To the men at the barricade in Saint-Denis, Book 14, Chapter II)
"You're the leader." (To Marius in Saint-Denis, Book 14, Chapter V)
"Your friends have just shot you." (To Javert in Saint-Denis, Book 14, Chapter V)
"The whole army of Paris is fighting. A third of that army is drawn up against the barricade where you are. Beside the National Guard, I can make out the shakos of the Fifth of the line and the colors of the Sixth Legion. You will be attacked in an hour. As for the people, they were boiling yesterday, but this morning they're not moving. Nothing to wait for, nothing to hope for. No more from a faubourg than from a regiment. You are abandoned." (To the men at the barricade in Jean Valjean, Book 1, Chapter III)
"Citizens, the Republic is not rich enough in men to incur useless expenditures. Vainglory is a waste. If it is the duty of some to leave, that duty should be performed as well as any other." (To the men at the barricade in Jean Valjean, Book 1, Chapter IV)
"Citizens, this is the Republic and universal suffrage reigns. You yourselves choose those who ought to go." (To the men at the barricade in Jean Valjean, Book 1, Chapter IV)
Monologue
"Citizens, do you picture the future to yourselves? The streets of cities inundated with light, green branches on the thresholds, nations sisters, men just, old men blessing children, the past loving the present, thinkers entirely at liberty, believers on terms of full equality, for religion heaven, God the direct priest, human conscience become an altar, no more hatreds, the fraternity of the workshop and the school, for sole penalty and recompense fame, work for all, right for all, peace over all, no more bloodshed, no more wars, happy mothers! To conquer matter is the first step; to realize the ideal is the second. Reflect on what progress has already accomplished. Formerly, the first human races beheld with terror the hydra pass before their eyes, breathing on the waters, the dragon which vomited flame, the griffin who was the monster of the air, and who flew with the wings of an eagle and the talons of a tiger; fearful beasts which were above man. Man, nevertheless, spread his snares, consecrated by intelligence, and finally conquered these monsters." (To the men at the barricade in Jean Valjean, Book 1, Chapter V)"Courage, and onward! Citizens, where are we going? To science made government, to the force of things become the sole public force, to the natural law, having in itself its sanction and its penalty and promulgating itself by evidence, to a dawn of truth corresponding to a dawn of day. We are advancing to the union of peoples; we are advancing to the unity of man. No more fictions; no more parasites. The real governed by the true, that is the goal. Civilization will hold its courts at the summit of Europe, and, later on, at the middle of continents, in a grand parliament of the intelligence." (To the men at the barricade in Jean Valjean, Book 1, Chapter V)
"...you adopted humanity for your mother and right for your father. You are about to die, that is to say to triumph, here. Citizens, whatever happens to-day, through our defeat as well as through our victory, it is a revolution that we are about to create. As conflagrations light up a whole city, so revolutions illuminate the whole human race. And what is the revolution that we shall cause? I have just told you, the Revolution of the True. From a political point of view, there is but a single principle; the sovereignty of man over himself. This sovereignty of myself over myself is called Liberty. Where two or three of these sovereignties are combined, the state begins. But in that association there is no abdication. Each sovereignty concedes a certain quantity of itself, to form the common right. This quantity is the same for all of us. This identity of concession which each makes to all, is called Equality. Common right is nothing else than the protection of all beaming on the right of each. This protection of all over each is called Fraternity. The point of intersection of all these assembled sovereignties is called society. This intersection being a junction, this point is a knot. Hence what is called the social bond. Some say social contract; which is the same thing, the word contract being etymologically formed with the idea of a bond. Let us come to an understanding about equality; for, if liberty is the summit, equality is the base. Equality, citizens, is not wholly a surface vegetation, a society of great blades of grass and tiny oaks; a proximity of jealousies which render each other null and void; legally speaking, it is all aptitudes possessed of the same opportunity; politically, it is all votes possessed of the same weight; religiously, it is all consciences possessed of the same right." (To the men at the barricade in Jean Valjean, Book 1, Chapter V)
"Equality has an organ: gratuitous and obligatory instruction. The right to the alphabet, that is where the beginning must be made. The primary school imposed on all, the secondary school offered to all, that is the law. From an identical school, an identical society will spring. Yes, instruction! light! light! everything comes from light, and to it everything returns." (To the men at the barricade in Jean Valjean, Book 1, Chapter V)
"Citizens, the nineteenth century is great, but the twentieth century will be happy. Then, there will be nothing more like the history of old, we shall no longer, as to-day, have to fear a conquest, an invasion, a usurpation, a rivalry of nations, arms in hand, an interruption of civilization depending on a marriage of kings, on a birth in hereditary tyrannies, a partition of peoples by a congress, a dismemberment because of the failure of a dynasty, a combat of two religions meeting face to face, like two bucks in the dark, on the bridge of the infinite; we shall no longer have to fear famine, farming out, prostitution arising from distress, misery from the failure of work and the scaffold and the sword, and battles and the ruffianism of chance in the forest of events. One might almost say: There will be no more events. We shall be happy. The human race will accomplish its law, as the terrestrial globe accomplishes its law; harmony will be re-established between the soul and the star; the soul will gravitate around the truth, as the planet around the light. Friends, the present hour in which I am addressing you, is a gloomy hour; but these are terrible purchases of the future. A revolution is a toll. Oh! the human race will be delivered, raised up, consoled! We affirm it on this barrier. Whence should proceed that cry of love, if not from the heights of sacrifice? Oh my brothers, this is the point of junction, of those who think and of those who suffer; this barricade is not made of paving-stones, nor of joists, nor of bits of iron; it is made of two heaps, a heap of ideas, and a heap of woes. Here misery meets the ideal. The day embraces the night, and says to it: 'I am about to die, and thou shalt be born again with me.' From the embrace of all desolations faith leaps forth. Sufferings bring hither their agony and ideas their immortality. This agony and this immortality are about to join and constitute our death. Brothers, he who dies here dies in the radiance of the future, and we are entering a tomb all flooded with the dawn." (To the men at the barricade in Jean Valjean, Book 1, Chapter V)
The end of the barricade
"Citizen, the Republic thanks you." (To Jean Valjean in Jean Valjean, Book 1, Chapter IX)"The fools! They're getting their men killed and using up our ammunition for nothing!" (To no one in particular on the barricade in Jean Valjean, Book 1, Chapter XII)
"Listen! it seems to me that Paris is waking." (To no one in particular on the barricade in Jean Valjean, Book 1, Chapter XIII)
"Patria." (A murmur when Bossuet and Courfeyrac are discussing Enjolras and his lack of a mistress in Jean Valjean Book 1, Chapter XIV)
"A quarter an our more of this success, and there won't be ten cartridges in the barricade." (To Bossuet [Gavroche overhears] in Jean Valjean Book 1, Chapter XIV)
"Shoot me." (To the soldiers in response to a cry "Let's shoot him on the spot" in Jean Valjean, Book 1, Chapter XXIII)
About Enjolras
Appearance
"Already a man, he still seemed a child." (Marius, Book 4, Chapter I)
"His flaring nostrils, his downcast eyes, gave to his implacable Greek profiles that expression of wrath and chastity which from the point of view of the ancient world belonged to justice." (Saint-Denis, Book 12, Chapter VIII)
"His eyes, filled with interior sight, gave off a kind of stifled fire. Suddenly he raised his head, his fair hair fell back like that of the angel on his somber chariot of stars, it was the mane of a startled lion with a flaming halo." (Jean Valjean, Book 1, Chapter V)
"His beauty, augmented at that moment by his dignity, was resplendent, and, as if he could no more be fatigued than wounded, after the terrible twenty-four hours just elapsed, he was fresh and healthy." (Jean Valjean, Book 1, Chapter XXIII)
Personality
"Most of the Friends of the ABC were students in close associations with a few workingmen." (Marius, Book 4, Chapter I)"He was the marble lover of liberty." (Marius, Book 4, Chapter I)
"His speech was roughly inspired and had the tremor of a hymn." (Marius, Book 4, Chapter I)
"Enjolras, being a believer, disdained this skeptic, and being sober, scorned this drunkard." (Marius, Book 4, Chapter I)
"Enjolras, who was standing on the crest of the barricade, musket in hand, raised his fine austere face. Enjolras, we know, had something of the Spartan and the Puritan." (Saint-Denis, Book 12, Chapter III)
"It seemed as though the menacing majesty of Enjolras, disarmed and motionless, weighed on that tumult, and as though, merely by the authority of his tranquil eye, that young man, who alone had no wound, superb, bloody, fascinating, indifferent as if he were invulnerable, compelled that sinister mob to kill him respectfully." (Jean Valjean, Book 1, Chapter XXIII)
"'I admire Enjolras,' said Bossuet. 'His impassive boldness astonishes me. He lives alone, which makes him perhaps a little sad. Enjolras suffers for his greatness, which binds him to celibacy. The rest of us more or less all have mistresses who make us mad, that is to say brave. When we're as amorous as a tiger, the least we can do is to fight like a lion. It's one way of avenging ourselves for the tricks that Mesdames our grisettes play us. Roland gets himself killed to spite Angelica; all our heroism comes from our women. A man without a woman is a pistol without a hammer; it's the woman who makes the man go off. Well, Enjolras has no woman. He's not in love, yet he finds a way to be intrepid. it is an incredible thing that a man can be as cold as ice and as bold as fire.'" (Jean Valjean, Book 1 Chapter XIV)
Beliefs
"He had one passion only, justice; one though only, to remove all obstacles." (Marius, Book 4, Chapter I)"Enjolras caught glimpses of a luminous uprising under the dark skirts of the future. Who knows? Perhaps the moment was approaching. The people seizing their rights again, what a glorious spectacle!The Revolution majestically resuming possession of France and saying to the world: Tomorrow! Enjolras was pleased." (Saint-Denis, Book 1 Chapter VI)
"This slowness allowed Enjolras to review the whole picture, and to perfect it. He felt that since such men were to die, their death should be a masterpiece." (Jean Valjean, Book 1, Chapter XVIII)
Leadership
"He was officiating and militant; from the immediate point of view, a soldier of democracy; above the movement of the time, a priest of the ideal." (Marius, Book 4, Chapter I)
"Enjolras felt himself caught up by the impatience that seizes strong souls on the threshold of important events." (Saint-Denis, Book 12, Chapter VII)
"Advice from Enjolras was an order." (Jean Valjean, Book 1, Chapter II)
"Enjolras, who had this quality of a leader, always to do as he said, fastened the pierced and bloody coat of the slain old man to this pole." (Jean Valjean, Book 1, Chapter II)
"Enjolras broke off rather than ceased, his lips moved noiselessly, as if he were continuing to speak to himself, and they kept on looking at him attentively, still trying to hear." (Jean Valjean, Book 1, Chapter V)
"Enjolras did not fall into this trap; the barricade did not reply." (Jean Valjean, Book 1, Chapter XI)
"And, covering them with his body, alone facing a battalion, he had them pass in behind him.They all rushed in. Enjolras, executing with his carbine, which he was now using as a cane, what fencers call la rose couverte, beat down the bayonets around him and in front of him, and entered last of all..." (Jean Valjean, Book 1, Chapter XXII)
Compassion
"Enjolras was silent. His virgin lips closed; and he remained some time standing on the spot where he had spilled blood, in marble immobility." (Saint-Denis, Book 12, Chapter VIII)
"Enjolras stooped down, raised the old man's head and fiercely kissed him on the forehead..." (Saint-Denis, Book 14, Chapter II)
"And a tear rolled slowly down Enjolras's marble cheek." (Jean Valjean, Book 1, Chapter VIII)
"Enjolras shook [Grantaire's] hand with a smile. The smile was not finished before the report was heard." (Jean Valjean, Book 1, Chapter XXIII)
Final Battle
"Enjolras, who carried the whole barricade in his head, reserved and sheltered himself; three soldiers fell one after the other under his battlement, without even having noticed him..." (Jean Valjean, Book 1, Chapter XXI)
"Enjolras alone was untouched." (Jean Valjean, Book 1, Chapter XXI)
"There was now only one single man there on his feet, Enjolras." (Jean Valjean, Book 1, Chapter XXIII)
"...he had retreated to the corner of the room, and there, with proud eye, haughty head, and that stump of a weapon in his grasp, he was still so formidable that a large space was left around him." (Jean Valjean, Book 1, Chapter XXIII)
"The moment Enjolras had crossed his arms, accepting the end, the uproar of the conflict in the room and all that chaos suddenly hushed into a sort of sepulchral solemnity." (Jean Valjean, Book 1, Chapter XXIII)
"Enjolras, pierced by eight bullets, remained backed up against the wall as if the bullets had nailed him there. Except that his head was tilted. Grantaire, struck down, collapsed at his feet." (Jean Valjean, Book 1, Chapter XXIII)
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