Victor Hugo Quotes
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Reason is intelligence taking exercise. Imagination is intelligence with an erection.
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We would be ashamed of our best behavior if the people knew the motives of our behaving so.
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Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing.
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Dieu s'est fait homme; soit. Le diable s'est fait femme!
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Wisdom is the health of the soul.
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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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Daring is the price of progress. All splendid conquests are the prize of boldness, more or less.
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Beauty is as useful as the useful. More so, perhaps. (Le beau est aussi utile que l'utile. Plus peut-etre.)
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To die for lack of love is horrible. The asphyxia of the soul.
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If I speak, I am condemned. If I stay silent, I am damned!
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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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It is only barbarous nations who have a sudden growth after a victory.
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Was it possible that Napoleon should win the battle of Waterloo? We answer, No! Why? Because of Wellington? Because of Blucher? No! Because of God! For Bonaparte to conquer at Waterloo was not the law of the nineteenth century. It was time that this vast man should fall. He had been impeached before the Infinite! He had vexed God! Waterloo was not a battle. It was the change of front of the Universe!
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So a voice in the mountain is enough to let loose an avalanche. A word too much may be followed by a caving in. If the word had not been spoken, it would not have happened.
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He had not yet lived long enough to have discovered that nothing is more close at hand then the impossible, and that what must be looked for is always the unforeseen.
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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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We are not loved by our friends for what we are; rather, we are loved in spite of what we are.
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God secludes Himself; but the thinker listens at the door.
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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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If you are stone, be magnetic; if a plant, be sensitive; but if you are human be love.
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Table talk and Lovers' talk equally elude the grasp; Lovers' talk is clouds, table talk is smoke.
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Nature is pitiless; she never withdraws her flowers, her music, her fragrance, and her sunlight from before human cruelty or suffering.
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Revolutions spring not from accident, but from necessity. A revolution is a return from the factitious to the real. It takes place because it must.
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Her soul trembled on her lips like a drop of dew on a flower.