Victor Hugo Quotes
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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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The man is placed where the Earth ends, the woman, where the heaven starts.
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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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There is a material advancement; we desire it. There is, also, a moral grandeur; we hold fast to it.
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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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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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He was fond of books, for they are cool and sure friends.
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Reason is intelligence taking exercise. Imagination is intelligence with an erection.
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The quantity of civilization is measured by the quality of imagination.
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A saint addicted to excessive self-abnegation is a dangerous associate; he may infect you with poverty, and a stiffening of those joints which are needed for advancement-in a word, with more renunciation than you care for-and so you flee the contagion.
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There are people who observe the rules of honor as one observes the stars, from a great distance.
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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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I didn't believe it could be so monstrous. It's wrong to be so absorbed in divine law as not to perceive human law. Death belongs to God alone. By what right do men tough that unknown thing?
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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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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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Slowly he took out the clothes in which, ten years beforem Cosette had left Montfermeil; first the little dress, then the black scarf, then the great heavy child's shoes Cosette could still almost have worn, so small was her foot, then the vest of very thich fustian, then the knitted petticoat, the the apron with pockets, then the wool stockings.... Then his venerable white head fell on the bed, this old stoical heart broke, his face was swallowed up, so to speak, in Cosette's clothes, and anybody who had passed along the staircase at that moment would have heard irrepressible sobbing.
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Youth is the future smiling at a stranger, which is itself.
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Cheerfulness is like money well expended in charity; the more we dispense of it, the greater our possession.
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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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Nothing is really small; whoever is open to the deep penetration of nature knows this.
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I represent a party which does not yet exist: the party Revolution-Civilization. This party will make the twentieth century. There will issue from it first the United States of Europe, then the United States of the World.
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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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I like the laughter that opens the lips and the heart, shows at the same time the pearls and the soul.
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Popularity - a piece of faded tinsel, that is out of date.