Victor Hugo Quotes
-
It is those books which a man possesses but does not read which constitute the most suspicious evidence against him.
-
Phenomena intersect; to see but one is to see nothing.
-
Though one believes in nothing, there are moments in life when one accepts the religion of the temple nearest at hand.
-
[T]he small is great, the great is small; all is in equilibrium in necessity.
-
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.
-
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.
-
It may be remarked in passing that success is an ugly thing. Men are deceived by its false resemblences to merit.
-
Poetry contains philosophy as the soul contains reason.
-
What love commences can be finished by God alone.
-
People weighed down with troubles do not look back; they know only too well that misfortune stalks them.
-
We are given up to those gods, those monsters, those giants, — our thoughts.
-
Civilization survives on the constant discovery of amity and an equal supply of damnation.
-
The most excellent symbol of the people is the paving stone. One walks on it until it falls on one's head.
-
If you want to civilize a man, begin with his grandmother.
-
M. Mabeuf’s political opinion was a passionate fondness for plants, and a still greater one for books. He had, like everybody else, his termination in ist, without which nobody could have lived in those times, but he was neither a royalist, nor a Bonapartist, nor a chartist, nor an Orleanist, nor an anarchist; he was an old-bookist.
-
Woe, alas, to those who have loved only bodies, forms, appearances! Death will rob them of everything. Try to love souls, you will find them again.
-
The hatred of luxury is not an intelligent hatred. It implies a hatred of arts.
-
He had, they said, tasted in succession all the apples of the tree of knowledge, and, whether from hunger or disgust, had ended by tasting the forbidden fruit.
-
Not being heard is no reason for silence.
-
There is a spectacle more grand than the sea; it is heaven; there is a spectacle more grand than heaven; it is the conscience.