Victor Hugo Quotes
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Algebra applies to the clouds.
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To meditate is to labour; to think is to act. Folded arms work, closed hands perform, a gaze fixed on heaven is a toil.
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As with stomachs, we should pity minds that do not eat.
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While contemplating the bride, and eyeing the cake of soap, he muttered between his teeth: 'Tuesday. It was not Tuesday. Was it Tuesday? Perhaps it was Tuesday. Yes, it was Tuesday.' No one has ever discovered to what this monologue referred. Yes, perchance, this monologue had some connection with the last occasion on which he had dined, three days before, for it was now Friday.
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To crush out fanaticism and revere the infinite, such is the law. Let us not confine ourselves to falling prostrate beneath the tree of creation and contemplating its vast ramifications full of stars. We have a duty to perform, to cultivate the human soul, to defend mystery against miracle, to adore the incomprehensible and to reject the absurd; to admit nothing that is inexplicable excepting what is necessary, to purify faith and obliterate superstition from the face of religion, to remove the vermin from the garden of God.
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Nothing is so stifling as symmetry. Symmetry is boredom, the quintessence of mourning. Despair yawns. There is something more terrible than a hell of suffering - a hell of boredom.
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Between the government which does evil and the people who accept it - there is a certain shameful solidarity.
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To rove about, musing, that is to say loitering, is, for a philosopher, a good way of spending time.
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If I were Jesus Christ, I would save Judas.
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The repose of darkness is deeper on the water than on the land.
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He would give all of his clothes to his servant, admonishing him NOT to return them until he had completed his day's work.
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From a political point of view, there is but one principle, the sovereignty of man over himself. This sovereignty of myself over myself is called Liberty.
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In 1815, M. Charles Francois-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D-----. He was a man of seventy-five, and had occupied the bishopric of D----- since 1806. Although it in no manner concerns, even in the remotest degree, what we have to relate, it may not be useless, were it only for the sake of exactness in all things, to notice here the reports and gossip which had arisen on his account from the time of his arrival in the diocese.
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It is a terrible thing to be happy! How pleased we are with it! How all-sufficient we think it! How, being in possession of the false aim of life, happiness, we forget the true aim, duty!
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Mettre tout en équilibre, c'est bien; mettre tout en harmonie, c'est mieux.
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There are people who observe the rules of honor as one observes the stars, from a great distance.
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There are no trifles in the human story, no trifling leaves on the tree.
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We do not comprehend everything, but we insult nothing.
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Symmetry is ennui, and ennui is the very essence of grief and melancholy. Despair yawns.
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Hope is a delusion; no hand can grasp a wave or a shadow.
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Do not economize on the hymeneal rites; do not prune them of their splendor, nor split farthings on the day when you are radiant. A wedding is not house-keeping.
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You are adorable, mademoiselle. I study your feet with the microscope and your soul with the telescope.
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Being good is easy, what is difficult is being just.
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Superstition, bigotry and prejudice, ghosts though they are, cling tenaciously to life; they are shades armed with tooth and claw. They must be grappled with unceasingly, for it is a fateful part of human destiny that it is condemned to wage perpetual war against ghosts. A shade is not easily taken by the throat and destroyed.