Javert Quotes

Quotes tagged as "javert" Showing 1-14 of 14
Victor Hugo
“A benevolent malefactor, merciful, gentle, helpful, clement, a convict, returning good for evil, giving back pardon for hatred, preferring pity to vengeance, preferring to ruin himself rather than to ruin his enemy, saving him who had smitten him, kneeling on the heights of virtue, more nearly akin to an angel than to a man. Javert was constrained to admit to himself that this monster existed.

Things could not go on in this manner. ”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“One can say that Javert is our conscience. The ever lurking presence of the law and our own condemnation. The tension between who we were and who we are and who we can be. Javert represents that inescapable, shameful past that forever haunts and persues one's conscience. Javert is the man of the law, and... There are no surprises with the law. The principle of retribution is simple and monotonous, like Euclidean logic. It's closed to all alternatives and shut up against divine or human intervention... Indeed, Javert represents the merciless application of the law, the blind Justice that in the end is befuddled by hope and the possibility of redemption without punishment.”
Cristiane Serruya, Trust: Betrayed

Erika Johansen
“...Javel saw evil in those bright blue eyes, not malevolence but something much worse: an evil born of lack of self-awareness, an evil that didn't know it was evil and therefore could justify anything.”
Erika Johansen, The Queen of the Tearling
tags: javert

Victor Hugo
“He was troubled; this brain, so limpid in its blindness, had lost its transparency; there was a cloud in this crystal.”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Victor Hugo
“In the moment when the eyes of the two men met, Javert, without having moved or made the least gesture, became hideous. No human emotion can wear an aspect so terrible as that of jubilation. He had the face of a fiend who has found the victim he thought he had lost.”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Victor Hugo
“To be granite and to doubt! To be the statue of Chastisement cast in one piece in the mould of the law, and suddenly to become aware of the fact that one cherishes beneath one's breast of bronze something absurd and disobedient which almost resembles a heart! To come to the pass of returning good for good, although one has said to oneself up to that day that that good is evil! To be the watch-dog, and to lick the intruder's hand! To be ice and melt! To be the pincers and to turn into a hand! To suddenly feel one's fingers opening! To relax one's grip,—what a terrible thing!”
Victor Hugo
tags: javert

Kelsey Brickl
“Youth is as easily wasted as a fine wine consumed by a drunken man. There is no poetry in aging, and Javert lived out the process in its most hideous iteration.”
Kelsey Brickl, Wolves and Urchins: The Early Life of Inspector Javert

Kelsey Brickl
“Sometimes a revolution turns into an actual government, or at the very least an actual way of life that contrasts with days past like blood on snow. Such was the case in France, where even as the guillotine released a steady river of gore, Royalist insurrections were suppressed by what had become a sophisticated military.

In Toulon, the Royalist insurrection in 1793 led to an actual siege by republicans, spearheaded by none other than Napoleon Bonaparte. The Royalists in Toulon, supported by the British and Spanish, were feared by the republicans as an existential threat to every hope and promise of the revolution. For months there were bombardments, cannon fire that made the windows in the prison tremble.”
Kelsey Brickl, Wolves and Urchins: The Early Life of Inspector Javert

Victor Hugo
“Then, with a demonic and sensual pleasure, he settled down to enjoy himself. He played his man knowing that he had him, deliberately postponing the climax, granting him a last illusion of freedom, relishing the situation like a spider with a fly buzzing in its web or a cat letting a mouse run between its paws — the ecstasy of watching those last struggles!”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
tags: javert

Kelsey Brickl
“Praying to the Almighty, Javert?” called a voice, and Javert opened his eyes to see Rousseau and Leclerc smirking at him. Javert tipped his head and said to the others,

"If I was, it would be awfully rude to interrupt my prayer, don’t you think? But, no, Leclerc. I find no solace in speaking with an imaginary puppeteer.”

Rousseau, who was twenty-five and utterly dim of mind, frowned at Javert’s words. Javert rolled his eyes and sighed,

"I don’t pray.”
Kelsey Brickl, Wolves and Urchins: The Early Life of Inspector Javert

Kelsey Brickl
“Fire on the cavalry!” cried an officer from behind them. Javert raised his musket and glared with one open eye at the approaching horde. His eyes trained on a man in white astride a large bay mount. The Mameluk cavalry had their curved swords wielded, and they shone in the sun like blinding jewels. Javert tried to decide whether he should hit the horse or the rider. Without hesitating, he made his decision and pulled the trigger.

The Mameluk cavalry rider’s arms flung upward as he was struck, and his body hurtled backward as though shoved by an invisible hand. The bay horse galloped onward in terror, leaving its master behind on the sand. The man’s white robes went scarlet around his belly, and he did not move again. Javert hurried to reload his musket, glancing over to see that Masse was sitting and staring over the battlefield in silence.”
Kelsey Brickl, Wolves and Urchins: The Early Life of Inspector Javert

Kelsey Brickl
“There was no justice in rebellion. This Javert had come to believe after seeing Marseille fall headfirst into the abyss of the revolution.”
Kelsey Brickl, Wolves and Urchins: The Early Life of Inspector Javert

Kelsey Brickl
“In his most thrilling military victory to date, Napoleon had defeated an Ottoman force eighteen thousand men strong at Aboukir. It had been Javert’s first real taste of battle, watching cannon fire blow ships into splinters and hearing the last screams of drowning men. The French army, stinking and spluttering with plague, had emerged victorious but exhausted. They had taken refuge in Alexandria, though it hardly felt safe. Very recently, Napoleon had left with a few of his nearest friends for a voyage into the Delta. Now Javert was just one of the confused mass left reeling in the wake of the chaos.”
Kelsey Brickl, Wolves and Urchins: The Early Life of Inspector Javert

Victor Hugo
“There is a kind of thrill known to only two creatures on earth — the mother who recovers her child and the tiger who recovers its prey.”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
tags: javert