How we cite our quotes: (Part.Book.Chapter.Line)
Quote #1
They were an ugly and dreadful pair, the Thénardiers, a marriage of cunning and fury. (2.3.2.3)
The Thénardiers show us that marriage isn't always a good thing. Sometimes it can bring two awful people together and just make them even more awful in the process. We don't generally go around recommending divorce (it's not really in our job description), but in this case we feel fairly confident that it would be a good move.
Quote #2
If a man is a passionate lover of women but has a wife whom he does not greatly care for […] he has only one way of dealing with the situation and securing his own peace of mind, and that is to hand the purse-strings over to her. (3.2.5.1)
This is a pretty shady piece of advice, since it basically tells us that a man can get away with adultery if he distracts his wife by giving her access to all the household money. Then again, this is Monsieur Gillenormand's theory, which means that Hugo probably wants us to take it with a grain of salt. Or maybe the whole salt shaker.
Quote #3
No paradise becomes terrestrial in the age in which we live. The younger sister had married the man of her dreams, but she had died. The elder had never married at all. (3.2.8.2)
Surprising no one, Hugo tells us that it's really hard to find pure joy while we're on this earth. You want that, you're going to have to wait for heaven. After all, whenever someone gets what they want in this book, they tend to either die young or lose their happiness quickly.