Victor Hugo Quotes
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Die, very good, but do not make others die. Suicides like the one which is about to take place here are sublime, but suicide is restricted, and does not allow of extension; and so soon as it affects your neighbors, suicide becomes murder.
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...But listen, there will be more joy in heaven over the tears of a repentant sinner than over the white robes of a hundred just men.
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The book which the reader now holds in his hands, from one end to the other, as a whole and in its details, whatever gaps, exceptions, or weaknesses it may contain, treats of the advance from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from falsity to truth, from darkness to daylight, from blind appetite to conscience, from decay to life, from bestiality to duty, from Hell to Heaven, from limbo to God. Matter itself is the starting-point, and the point of arrival is the soul. Hydra at the beginning, an angel at the end.
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The quantity of civilization is measured by the quality of imagination.
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To err is human. To loaf is Parisian.
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God in his harmony has equal ends For cedar that resists and reed that bends; For good it is a woman sometimes rules, Holds in her hand the power, and manners, schools, And laws, and mind; succeeding master proud, With gentle voice and smil.
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There are moments when a rope's end, a pole, the branch of the tree, is life itself, and it is a frightful thing to see a living being lose his hold upon it, and fall like a ripe fruit.
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There comes an hour when protest no longer suffices; after philosophy there must be action; the strong hand finishes what the idea has sketched.
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The paradise of the rich is made out of the hell of the poor.
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Yes, instruction! Light! Light! Everything comes from light, and to everything it returns.
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Poetry contains philosophy as the soul contains reason.
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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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It seems as though, at the approach of a certain dark hour, the light of heaven infills those who are leaving the light of earth.
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Loving is almost a substitute for thinking. Love is a burning forgetfulness of all other things. How shall we ask passion to be logical?
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At the shrine of friendship never say die, let the wine of friendship never run dry.
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In the vast cosmical changes, the universal life comes and goes in unknown quantities, ... sowing an animalcule here, crumbling a star there, oscillating and ... entangling, from the highest to the lowest, all activities in the obscurity of a dizzying mechanism, hanging the flight of an insect upon the movement of the earth... Enormous gearing, whose first motor is the gnat, and whose last wheel is the zodiac.
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What's our baggage? Only vows, Happiness, and all our care, And the flower that sweetly shows Nestling lightly in your hair.
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It is the peculiarity of grief to bring out the childish side of man.
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Wisdom is the health of the soul.
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Cheerfulness is like money well expended in charity; the more we dispense of it, the greater our possession.