Victor Hugo Quotes
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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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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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There is but one way of refusing To-morrow, that is to die.
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What is called honors and dignities, and even honor and dignity, is generally fool's gold.
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It is the peculiarity of grief to bring out the childish side of man.
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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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A woman's best qualities are harmful if undiluted with prudence.
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All roads are blocked to a philosophy which reduces everything to the word "no." To "no" there is only one answer and that is "yes." Nihilism has no substance. There is no such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing. Man lives more by affirmation than by bread.
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There is no more sovereign eloquence than the truth in indignation.
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Humanity is our common lot. All men are made of the same clay. There is no difference, at least here on Earth, in the fate assigned to us. We come of the same void, inhabit the same flesh, are dissolved in the same ashes. But ignorance infecting the human substance turns it black, and that incurable blackness, gaining possession of the soul, becomes Evil.
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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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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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If you want to civilize a man, begin with his grandmother.
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Mothers arms are made of tenderness, And sweet sleep blesses the child who lies therein.
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All who suffer are full of hatred; all who live drag a remorse: the dead alone have broken their chains.
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I'd rather be hissed at for a good verse, than applauded for a bad one.
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One only needs to see a smile in a white crape bonnet in order to enter the palace of dreams.
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Diamonds are found only in the dark bowels of the earth; truths are found only in the depths of thought. It seemed to him that after descending into those depths after long groping in the blackest of this darkness, he had at last found one of these diamonds, one of these truths, and that he held it in his hand; and it blinded him to look at it.
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If the infinite had no me, then me would be its limit. It would not be the infinite, therefore it would not be.
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Whenever we encounter the Infinite in man, however imperfectly understood, we treat it with respect. Whether in the synagogue, the mosque, the pagoda, or the wigwam, there is a hideous aspect which we execrate and a sublime aspect which we venerate. So great a subject for spiritual contemplation, such measureless dreaming - the echo of God on the human wall!
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If we must suffer, let us suffer nobly.
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What love commences can be finished by God alone.
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Go to sleep in peace. God is awake.
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...Human thought has no limit. At its risk and peril, it analyzes and dissects its own fascination. We could almost say that, by a sort of splendid reaction, it fascinates nature; the mysterious world surrounding us returns what it receives; it is likely that contemplators are contemplated.