Victor Hugo Quotes
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The hatred of luxury is not an intelligent hatred. It implies a hatred of arts.
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At the moment when her eyes closed, when all feeling vanished in her, she thought that she felt a touch of fire imprinted on her lips, a kiss more burning than the red-hot iron of the executioner.
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It may be remarked in passing that success is an ugly thing. Men are deceived by its false resemblences to merit.
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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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People do not read stupidities with impunity.
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That is the explanation of war, an outrage by humanity upon humanity in despite of humanity.
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His universal compassion was due less to natural instinct, than to a profound conviction, a sum of thoughts that in the course of living had filtered through to his heart: for in the nature of man, as in rock, there may be channels hollowed by the dropping of water, and these can never be destroyed.
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Emotion is always new and the word has always served; therein lies the difficulty of expressing emotion.
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We are given up to those gods, those monsters, those giants, — our thoughts.
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God made only water, but man made wine.
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Let us leave to the brain what belongs to it, and agree that the work of the men of genius is of the superhuman, the offspring of man.
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She was sad with an obscure sadness of which she had not the secret herself. There was in her whole person the stupor of a life ended but never commenced.
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I believe, sir, in all the progress. Air navigation is the result of the oceanic navigation: from water the human has to pass in the air. Everywhere where creation will be breathable to him, the human will penetrate into the creation. Our only limit is life.
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I didn't believe it could be so monstrous. It's wrong to be so absorbed in divine law as not to perceive human law. Death belongs to God alone. By what right do men tough that unknown thing?
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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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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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Many great actions are committed in small struggles.
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People weighed down with troubles do not look back; they know only too well that misfortune stalks them.
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There is no more sovereign eloquence than the truth in indignation.
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What love commences can be finished by God alone.
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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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By making himself a priest made himself a demon.
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Yes, instruction! Light! Light! Everything comes from light, and to everything it returns.
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Slowly he took out the clothes in which, ten years beforem Cosette had left Montfermeil; first the little dress, then the black scarf, then the great heavy child's shoes Cosette could still almost have worn, so small was her foot, then the vest of very thich fustian, then the knitted petticoat, the the apron with pockets, then the wool stockings.... Then his venerable white head fell on the bed, this old stoical heart broke, his face was swallowed up, so to speak, in Cosette's clothes, and anybody who had passed along the staircase at that moment would have heard irrepressible sobbing.