Victor Hugo Quotes
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One of the magnanimities of woman is to yield.
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You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around everything that shines. Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats. Do no bother yourself about it; disdain. Keep your mind serene as you keep your life clear.
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We are given up to those gods, those monsters, those giants, — our thoughts.
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Being good is easy, what is difficult is being just.
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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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An increase of tenderness always ended by boiling over and turning to indignation. He was at the point where we seek to adopt a course, and to accept what tears us apart.
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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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A language does not become fixed. The human intellect is always on the march, or, if you prefer, in movement, and languages with it.
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He who contemplates the depths of Paris is seized with vertigo. Nothing is more fantastic. Nothing is more tragic. Nothing is more sublime.
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There is a way of meeting error while on the road of truth.
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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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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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People do not read stupidities with impunity.
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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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Every man is a book in which God himself writes.
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Symmetry is ennui, and ennui is the very essence of grief and melancholy. Despair yawns.
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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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Sire, you are looking at a plain man, and I am looking at a great man. Each of us may benefit.
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Where would the shout of love begin, if not from the summit of sacrifice?
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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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Dry happiness is like dry bread. We eat, but we do not dine. I wish for the superfluous, for the useless, for the extravagant, for the too much, for that which is not good for anything.
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A few feet under the ground reigns so profound a silence, and yet so much tumult on the surface!
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Go to sleep in peace. God is awake.
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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.