Victor Hugo Quotes
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During a wise man's whole life, his destiny holds his philosophy in a state of siege.
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I repeat, whether we be Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns us all.
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She might have melted a heart of stone, but nothing can melt a heart of wood.
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As with stomachs, we should pity minds that do not eat.
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Civil war.... What did the words mean? Was there any such thing as "foreign war"? Was not all warfare between men warfare between brothers?
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We need those who pray constantly to compensate for those who do not pray at all.
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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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He saw before him two roads, both equally straight ; but he saw two; and that terrified him — him, who had never in his life known but one straight line. And, bitter anguish, these two roads were contradictory.
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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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La musique...est la vapeur de l’art. Elle est à la poésie ce que la rêverie est à la pensée, ce que le fluide est au liquide, ce que l’océan des nuées est à l’océan des ondes.
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If he had had all Peru in his pocket, he would certainly have given it to this dancer; but Gringoire had not Peru in his pocket; and besides, America was not yet discovered.
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The holy law of Jesus Christ governs our civilisation, but it does not yet permeate it.
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What was more needed by this old man who divided the leisure hours of his life, where he had so little leisure, between gardening in the daytime, and contemplation at night? Was not this narrow enclosure, with the sky for a background, enough to enable him to adore God in his most beautiful as well as in his most sublime works? Indeed, is not that all, and what more can be desired? A little garden to walk, and immensity to reflect upon. At his feet something to cultivate and gather; above his head something to study and meditate upon: a few flowers on the earth, and all the stars in the sky.
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Now, one cannot read nonsense with impunity.
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In joined hands there is still some token of hope, in the clenched fist none.
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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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Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart; I breathe at this hour the fragrance of the lilacs, the violets, and the roses, as at twenty years ago.
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Progress is the life-style of man.
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To have lied is to have suffered.
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He is the best gentleman that is the son of his own deserts, and not the degenerated heir of another's virtue.
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Friendship exists outside our modern economy of scarcity... It's not about apportioning vanishing resources of time and energy. Friendship is a blessed relic of the ancient economy of the gift, and the time freely given to people dear to you actually creates magical abundance.
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There is suffering in the light; in excess it burns. Flame is hostile to the wing. To burn and yet to fly, this is the miracle of genius.
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These Greek capitals, black with age, and quite deeply graven in the stone, with I know not what signs peculiar to Gothic calligraphy imprinted upon their forms and upon their attitudes, as though with the purpose of revealing that it had been a hand of the Middle Ages which had inscribed them there, and especially the fatal and melancholy meaning contained in them, struck the author deeply.
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It is in the name of Moses that Bellarmin thunderstrikes Galileo; and this great vulgarizer of the great seeker Copernicus, Galileo, the old man of truth, the magian of the heavens, was reduced to repeating on his knees word for word after the inquisitor this formula of shame: "Corde sincera et fide non ficta abjuro maledico et detestor supradictos errores et hereses." Falsehood put an ass's hood on science.