Victor Hugo Quotes
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I exist," murmurs someone whose name is Everyone. "I'm young and in love; I am old and I want rest; I work, I prosper, I do good business, I have houses to rent, money in State Securities; I am happy, I have wife and children; I like all these things and I want to go on living, so leave me alone."... There are moments when all this casts a deep chill on the large-minded pioneers of the human race.
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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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Mirrors, those revealers of the truth, are hated; that does not prevent them from being of use.
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In short, I am doing what I can, I suffer with the same universal suffering, and I try to assuage it, I possess only the puny forces of a man, and I cry to all: “Help me!
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All roads are blocked to a philosophy which reduces everything to the word "no." To "no" there is only one answer and that is "yes." Nihilism has no substance. There is no such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing. Man lives more by affirmation than by bread.
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Do you know what friendship is?' he asked. 'Yes,' replied the gypsy; 'it is to be brother and sister; two souls which touch without mingling, two fingers on one hand.' 'And love?' pursued Gringoire. 'Oh! love!' said she, and her voice trembled, and her eye beamed. 'That is to be two and to be but one. A man and a woman mingled into one angel. It is heaven.
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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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Mettre tout en équilibre, c'est bien; mettre tout en harmonie, c'est mieux.
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Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing.
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I think, therefore I doubt.
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God made only water, but man made wine.
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Foppery is the egotism of clothes.
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But secondly you say 'society must exact vengeance, and society must punish'. Wrong on both counts. Vengeance comes from the individual and punishment from God.
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Symmetry is ennui, and ennui is the very essence of grief and melancholy. Despair yawns.
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Waterloo is a battle of the first rank won by a captain of the second.
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A woman's best qualities are harmful if undiluted with prudence.
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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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What is called honors and dignities, and even honor and dignity, is generally fool's gold.
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One of the magnanimities of woman is to yield.
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Love, thine is the future. Death, I use thee, but I hate thee. Citizens, there shall be in the future neither darkness nor thunderbolts; neither ferocious ignorance nor blood for blood.
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Crime is redeemed by remorse, but not by a blow of the axe or slipknot. Blood has to be washed by tears but not by blood.
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It is very fortunate that kings cannot err. Hence their contradictions never perplex us.
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Despots play their part in the works of thinkers. Fettered words are terrible words. The writer doubles and trebles the power of his writing when a ruler imposes silence on the people. Something emerges from that enforced silence, a mysterious fullness which filters through and becomes steely in the thought.
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There is a way of meeting error while on the road of truth.