What a powerful book! 
 I have to say that one way I've decided if I've read a book that I consider one of my all time favorites is if, after having finished the book, it makes me feel like I want to be a better friend, father, brother, etc. That's how I felt after finishing this book! I felt motivated to make the best of my life and to not judge others and make them experience a harder life then they already are because of my ill-informed and irrational judgements. 
 I read the full version with no abridgements. Yeah, it took a while... One of the criticisms of the book is that it's a little "bloated," or "long winded," and that there's unnecessary tangents detailed at length... Well maybe that's true, but at the same time I get the feeling Hugo is diving very deep with his characters backgrounds, histories, etc. (even the minor ones) in order to give us a great amount of understanding of who they really are in an effort to help us correctly judge them,(not to harshly for some, and harsher for others.) In contrast to that, he shows you how they all misjudge one another precisely because each of the characters in the book don't have each other's in depth background stories, whether prohibited this information by circumstance or pride. See what I'm getting at? His tangents are for a purpose of creating wise and knowledgeable judges out of the readers and this contrasts with the terrible judgements each ignorant character makes... well except for the bishop of course, he does all right! :-) 
 Anyway, great book! Very inspirational! I'd recommend it to anyone who would like to feel the way I did after having finished it! 
 Some favorite quotes: 
 "Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise." 
 "The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only." 
 "To love another person is to see the face of God." 
 "It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live." 
 Laughter is sunshine, it chases winter from the human face." 
 "To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life." 
 "Those who do not weep, do not see." 
 "You ask me what forces me to speak? a strange thing; my conscience." 
 "Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness." 
 "When love has fused and mingled two beings in a sacred and angelic unity, the secret of life has been discovered so far as they are concerned; they are no longer anything more than the two boundaries of the same destiny; they are no longer anything but the two wings of the same spirit. Love, soar." 
 "Life's great happiness is to be convinced we are loved."