"Conscience is the labyrinth of illusion, desire, and pursuit, the furnace of dreams, the repository of thoughts of which we are ashamed; it is the pandemonium of sophistry, the battlefield of passions. To peer at certain moments into the withdrawn face of a human being in the act of reflection, to see something of what lies beyond their outward silence, is to discern struggle on a Homeric scale, conflicts of dragons and hydras, aerial hosts as in Milton, towering vistas as in Dante."

The Thernardiers are so beastly. Although it is just a story, it invokes a sense of fury and indignance over their actions toward Fantine and Cosette. Hugo is indeed a great storyteller. 

Marcus Aurelius

https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/11/18/marcus-aurelius-meditations-mortality/

Alexander the Great and his mule driver both died and the same thing happened to both. They were absorbed alike into the life force of the world, or dissolved alike into atoms.

We have to go there too, where all of them have already gone: 

… the eloquent and the wise — Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Socrates …
… the heroes of old, the soldiers and kings who followed them …
… the smart, the generous, the hardworking, the cunning, the selfish …
… and even [those] who laughed at the whole brief, fragile business. 

All underground for a long time now. 

And what harm does it do them? Or the others either — the ones whose names we don’t even know?

The only thing that isn’t worthless: to live this life out truthfully and rightly. And be patient with those who don’t.

Kingdoms raised 

Kingdoms crumbled.

Kings reigned

Kings befallen.

Things mortal, they never last. 

Power you held dearly in your bloody hands

Gold and silver and riches

You paid for with your life

What good are they

When the sun is overcome by darkness

And all things under the heavens 

Turn to dust?

"The brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over we realize this: that the human race has been roughly handled, but that it has advanced." 

On grief

Quite a good analogy

Anna Quindlen

"In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own. I learned who I was and who I wanted to be, what I might aspire to, and what I might dare to dream about my world and myself. More powerfully and persuasively than from the "shalt nots" of the Ten Commandments, I learned the difference between good and evil, right and wrong. A Wrinkle in Time described that evil, that wrong, existing in a different dimension from our own. But I felt that I, too, existed much of the time in a different dimension from everyone else I knew. There was waking, and there was sleeping. And then there were books, a kind of parallel universe in which anything might happen and frequently did, a universe in which I might be a newcomer but was never really a stranger. My real, true world. My perfect island."

I feel the same way sometimes- that reading brings you into a parallel universe and let you live through a many different lives, experiences, emotions, etc. A Book sometimes intrigues you, creeps you out, makes you cry, makes you smile, inspires you, piques your curiosity...it's no wonder that we sometimes seek solace in books.  I love that sense of serenity on a quiet afternoon, sitting with a book, and a cup of hot tea, and it is double the bliss when it is gloomy, rainy day. I don't know why but I always feel that rainy days complement books perfectly.