Victor Hugo Quotes
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Winter changes into stone the water of heaven and the heart of man.
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Who can be sure that Jean Valjean had not been on the verge of losing heart and giving up the struggle? In loving he recovered his strength. But the truth is that he was no less vulnerable than Cosette. He protected her and she sustained him. Thanks to him she could go forward into life, and thanks to her he could continue virtous. He was the child's support and she his mainstay. Sublime, unfathomable marvel of the balance of destiny!
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A day will come when markets, open to trade, and minds, open to ideas, will become the sole battlefield.
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Is there not in every human soul a primitive spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this world and immortal in the next, which can be developed by goodness, kindled, lit up, and made to radiate, and which evil can never entirely extinguish.
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A sewer is a cynic. It tells All.
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Stupidity talks, vanity acts.
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In saying no to progress, it is not the future which they condemn, but themselves. They give themselves a melancholy disease; they inoculate themselves with the past. There is but one way of refusing tomorrow, that is to die.
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Every blade has two edges; he who wounds with one wounds himself with the other.
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Great blunders are often made, like large ropes, of a multitude of fibers. Take the cable thread by thread, take separately all the little determining motives, you break them one after another, and you say: that is all! Wind them and twist them together, they become an enormity.
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He had slipped, climbed, rolled, searched, walked, persevered, that is all. Such is the secret of all triumphs.
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A one-eyed man is much more incomplete than a blind man, for he knows what it is that's lacking.
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When people look back at their childhood or youth, their wistfulness comes from the memory, not of what their lives had been in those years, but of what life had then promised to be. The expectation of some indefinable splendor, of the unusual, the exciting, the great is an attribute of youth and the process of aging is the process of that expectations' gradual extinction. One does not have to let it happen. But that fire dies for lack of fuel, under the gray weight of disappointments.
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Have no fear of robbers or murderers. They are external dangers, petty dangers. We should fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices the real murderers. The great dangers are within us. Why worry about what threatens our heads or our purses? Let us think instead of what threatens our souls.
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The owl goes not into the nest of the lark.
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Whatever causes night in our souls may leave stars. Cimourdain was full of virtues and truth, but they shine out of a dark background.
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The memory of an absent person shines in the deepest recesses of the heart, shining the more brightly the more wholly its object has vanished: a light on the horizon of the despairing, darkened spirit; a star gleaming in our inward night.
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Every good quality runs into a defect; economy borders on avarice, the generous are not far from the prodigal, the brave man is close to the bully; he who is very pious is slightly sanctimonious; there are just as many vices to virtue as there are holes in the mantle of Diogenes.
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I had a dream my life would be different from this hell I am living, so different from what it seemed. Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.
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The aim of art is almost divine: to bring to life again if it is writing history, to create if it is writing poetry.
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A criminal remains a criminal whether he uses a convict's suit or a monarch's crown.
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The repose of darkness is deeper on the water than on the land.
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The death agony of the barricade was about to begin.For, since the preceding evening, the two rows of houses in the Rue de la Chanvrerie had become two walls; ferocious walls, doors closed, windows closed, shutters closed. A house is an escarpment, a door is a refusal, a facade is a wall. This wall hears, sees and will not. It might open and save you. No. This wall is a judge. It gazes at you and condemns you. What dismal things are closed houses.
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The left-handed are precious; they take places which are inconvenient for the rest.
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Tobacco is the plant that converts thoughts into dreams.