All 50 Uses of
divine
in
Les Miserables
- PREFACE So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to divine destiny; so long as the three great problems of the century— the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light— are unsolved; so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the…†
Chpt 1.1
- It is wrong to become absorbed in the divine law to such a degree as not to perceive human law.†
Chpt 1.1
- Why not mention these almost divinely childish sayings of kindness?†
Chpt 1.1
- Was not this narrow enclosure, with the heavens for a ceiling, sufficient to enable him to adore God in his most divine works, in turn?†
Chpt 1.1
- Had he done so, he would have seen the host of the Cross of Colbas standing on his threshold, surrounded by all the guests of his inn, and all the passers-by in the street, talking vivaciously, and pointing him out with his finger; and, from the glances of terror and distrust cast by the group, he might have divined that his arrival would speedily become an event for the whole town.†
Chpt 1.2
- Then still sobbing, he raised his right hand and lowered it gradually seven times, as though he were touching in succession seven heads of unequal heights, and from this gesture it was divined that the thing which he had done, whatever it was, he had done for the sake of clothing and nourishing seven little children.†
Chpt 1.2
- Is there not in every human soul, was there not in the soul of Jean Valjean in particular, a first spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this world, immortal in the other, which good can develop, fan, ignite, and make to glow with splendor, and which evil can never wholly extinguish?†
Chpt 1.2
- There was something almost divine in this man, who was thus august, without being himself aware of it.†
Chpt 1.2
- It would have been impossible to divine it.†
Chpt 1.2
- Dupuytren and Recamier entered into a quarrel in the amphitheatre of the School of Medicine, and threatened each other with their fists on the subject of the divinity of Jesus Christ.†
Chpt 1.3
- …skin which, here and there allowed the azure branching of the veins to be seen, joy, a cheek that was young and fresh, the robust throat of the Juno of AEgina, a strong and supple nape of the neck, shoulders modelled as though by Coustou, with a voluptuous dimple in the middle, visible through the muslin; a gayety cooled by dreaminess; sculptural and exquisite—such was Fantine; and beneath these feminine adornments and these ribbons one could divine a statue, and in that statue a soul.†
Chpt 1.3
- This woman's child was one of the most divine creatures that it is possible to behold. lt was a girl, two or three years of age.†
Chpt 1.4
- It can be divined.†
Chpt 1.4 *
- It was divined, from some words which escaped Javert, that he had secretly investigated, with that curiosity which belongs to the race, and into which there enters as much instinct as will, all the anterior traces which Father Madeleine might have left elsewhere.†
Chpt 1.5
- When she was in the street, she divined that people turned round behind her, and pointed at her; every one stared at her and no one greeted her; the cold and bitter scorn of the passers-by penetrated her very flesh and soul like a north wind.†
Chpt 1.5
- Great sorrow is a divine and terrible ray, which transfigures the unhappy.†
Chpt 1.5
- Vincent de Paul has divinely traced the features of the Sister of Charity in these admirable words, in which he mingles as much freedom as servitude: "They shall have for their convent only the house of the sick; for cell only a hired room; for chapel only their parish church; for cloister only the streets of the town and the wards of the hospitals; for enclosure only obedience; for gratings only the fear of God; for veil only modesty."†
Chpt 1.7
- The reader has, no doubt, already divined that M. Madeleine is no other than Jean Valjean.†
Chpt 1.7
- That Javert, who has been annoying me so long; that terrible instinct which seemed to have divined me, which had divined me— good God! and which followed me everywhere; that frightful hunting-dog, always making a point at me, is thrown off the scent, engaged elsewhere, absolutely turned from the trail: henceforth he is satisfied; he will leave me in peace; he has his Jean Valjean.†
Chpt 1.7
- That Javert, who has been annoying me so long; that terrible instinct which seemed to have divined me, which had divined me— good God! and which followed me everywhere; that frightful hunting-dog, always making a point at me, is thrown off the scent, engaged elsewhere, absolutely turned from the trail: henceforth he is satisfied; he will leave me in peace; he has his Jean Valjean.†
Chpt 1.7
- …spotted woodwork, a dirty ceiling, tables covered with serge that was yellow rather than green; doors blackened by handmarks; tap-room lamps which emitted more smoke than light, suspended from nails in the wainscot; on the tables candles in brass candlesticks; darkness, ugliness, sadness; and from all this there was disengaged an austere and august impression, for one there felt that grand human thing which is called the law, and that grand divine thing which is called justice.†
Chpt 1.7
- "Nevertheless," continued the President, "even in the man whom the law has degraded, there may remain, when the divine mercy permits it, a sentiment of honor and of equity.†
Chpt 1.7
- At that moment there was about him that divine something which causes multitudes to stand aside and make way for a man.†
Chpt 1.7
- Any one who did not know Javert, and who had chanced to see him at the moment when he penetrated the antechamber of the infirmary, could have divined nothing of what had taken place, and would have thought his air the most ordinary in the world.†
Chpt 1.8
- The humiliation of having, in some slight degree, lost the scent, and of having indulged, for a few moments, in an error with regard to Champmathieu, was effaced by pride at having so well and accurately divined in the first place, and of having for so long cherished a just instinct.†
Chpt 1.8
- Had he reached the point where he could no longer recognize the reef, could no longer divine the snare, no longer discern the crumbling brink of abysses?†
Chpt 2.1
- That light called history is pitiless; it possesses this peculiar and divine quality, that, pure light as it is, and precisely because it is wholly light, it often casts a shadow in places where people had hitherto beheld rays; from the same man it constructs two different phantoms, and the one attacks the other and executes justice on it, and the shadows of the despot contend with the brilliancy of the leader.†
Chpt 2.1
- Along the crest of the plateau ran a sort of trench whose presence it was impossible for the distant observer to divine.†
Chpt 2.1
- An emanation from the divine whirlwind leaps forth and comes sweeping over these men, and they shake, and one of them sings the song supreme, and the other utters the frightful cry.†
Chpt 2.1
- Jomini divides the battle of Waterloo into four moments; Muffling cuts it up into three changes; Charras alone, though we hold another judgment than his on some points, seized with his haughty glance the characteristic outlines of that catastrophe of human genius in conflict with divine chance.†
Chpt 2.1
- …of the ground, tactics, which preserve the equilibrium of battalions, carnage, executed according to rule, war regulated, watch in hand, nothing voluntarily left to chance, the ancient classic courage, absolute regularity; on the other, intuition, divination, military oddity, superhuman instinct, a flaming glance, an indescribable something which gazes like an eagle, and which strikes like the lightning, a prodigious art in disdainful impetuosity, all the mysteries of a profound soul,…†
Chpt 2.1
- Waterloo bears divine right on its crupper.†
Chpt 2.1
- It does not become disconcerted, but adjusts to its divine work the man who has bestridden the Alps, and the good old tottering invalid of Father Elysee.†
Chpt 2.1
- A RECRUDESCENCE OF DIVINE RIGHT.†
Chpt 2.1
- A lie wedded 1789; the right divine was masked under a charter; fictions became constitutional; prejudices, superstitions and mental reservations, with Article 14 in the heart, were varnished over with liberalism.†
Chpt 2.1
- The Spanish campaign became in their counsels an argument for force and for adventures by right Divine.†
Chpt 2.2
- Her hands were, as her mother had divined, "ruined with chilblains."†
Chpt 2.3
- Even before the stranger had so clearly manifested his interest in Cosette, Thenardier had divined his purpose.†
Chpt 2.3
- Oh, unfathomable and divine mystery of the balances of destiny!†
Chpt 2.4
- All at once, in the midst of this profound calm, a fresh sound arose; a sound as celestial, divine, ineffable, ravishing, as the other had been horrible.†
Chpt 2.5
- He speedily divined, however, that Jean Valjean would want to put the river between his pursuers and himself.†
Chpt 2.5
- [15] On the boughs hang three bodies of unequal merits: Dismas and Gesmas, between is the divine power.†
Chpt 2.6
- …ordinary churches, a prolongation behind the altar, but a sort of hall, or obscure cellar, to the right of the officiating priest; suppose this hall to be shut off by a curtain seven feet in height, of which we have already spoken; in the shadow of that curtain, pile up on wooden stalls the nuns in the choir on the left, the school-girls on the right, the lay-sisters and the novices at the bottom, and you will have some idea of the nuns of the Petit-Picpus assisting at divine service.†
Chpt 2.6
- These theorists, who are in other respects people of intelligence, have a very simple process; they apply to the past a glazing which they call social order, divine right, morality, family, the respect of elders, antique authority, sacred tradition, legitimacy, religion; and they go about shouting, "Look! take this, honest people.†
Chpt 2.7
- In the presence of the darkness which environs us, and which awaits us, in our ignorance of what the immense dispersion will make of us, we reply: "There is probably no work more divine than that performed by these souls."†
Chpt 2.7
- He had divined, from a dull noise, that they were crossing the bridge of Austerlitz.†
Chpt 2.8
- She divined that they were passing through a crisis.†
Chpt 2.8
- A voice within his conscience replied: "The most divine of human generosities, the expiation for others."†
Chpt 2.8
- End of the trees, beginning of the roofs; end of the grass, beginning of the pavements; end of the furrows, beginning of the shops, end of the wheel-ruts, beginning of the passions; end of the divine murmur, beginning of the human uproar; hence an extraordinary interest.†
Chpt 3.1
- As everything opens when one has a key, so he explained to himself that which he had hated, he penetrated that which he had abhorred; henceforth he plainly perceived the providential, divine and human sense of the great things which he had been taught to detest, and of the great men whom he had been instructed to curse.†
Chpt 3.3
Definitions:
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(divine as in: to forgive is divine) wonderful; or god-like or coming from God
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(divine as in: divined from tea leaves) to predict or discover something supernaturally (as if by magic)