Victor Hugo Quotes
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Nothing discernible to the eye of the spirit is more brilliant or obscure than man; nothing is more formidable, complex, mysterious, and infinite. There is a prospect greater than the sea, and it is the sky; there is a prospect greater than the sky, and it is the human soul.
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Civilization survives on the constant discovery of amity and an equal supply of damnation.
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It is very fortunate that kings cannot err. Hence their contradictions never perplex us.
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God will bless you,' said he, 'you are an angel since you take care of the flowers.' 'No,' she replied. 'I am the devil, but that's all the same to me.
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A tempest ceases, a cyclone passes over, a wind dies down, a broken mast can be replaced, a leak can be stopped, a fire extinguished, but what will become of this enormous brute of bronze?
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Nothing awakens reminiscence like an aroma.
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To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.
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It was SHE. Whoever has loved knows all the radiant meaning contained in the three letters of this word ‘she.
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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.
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The quantity of civilization is measured by the quality of imagination.
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I write with one hand, but I fight with both.
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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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Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart. The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. . . . For half a century I have been writing thoughts in prose, verse, history, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode, and song. I have tried them all, but I feel I have not said a thousandth part of that which is within me. When I go down to the grave, I can say "I have finished my day's work," but I cannot say "I have finished my life's work."
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All animals are to be found in men and each of theme exists in some man, sometimes several at the time.
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God became man, granted. The devil became a woman.
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The greatest blunders, like the thickest ropes, are often compounded of a multitude of strands. Take the rope apart, separate it into the small threads that compose it, and you can break them one by one. You think, That is all there was! But twist them all together and you have something tremendous.
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If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.
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To err is human. To loaf is Parisian.
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You preserve your shame but you kill your glory.
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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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Need is a low door which, when we must by stern necessity pass through, forces the greatest to bend down the most.
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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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The thirst for the Infinite proves infinity.
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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.