Victor Hugo Quotes
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As for the author, he is profoundly unaware of what the classical or romantic genre might consist of.... In literature, as in allthings, there is only the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the true and the false.
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Revery, which is thought in its nebulous state, borders closely upon the land of sleep, by which it is bounded as by a natural frontier.
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Nobody knows like a woman how to say things at the same time sweet and profound. Sweetness and depth, this is all of woman; this is all of Heaven.
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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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If you are stone, be magnetic; if a plant, be sensitive; but if you are human be love.
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Emotion is always new and the word has always served; therein lies the difficulty of expressing emotion.
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The beginning as well as the end of all his thoughts was hatred of human law, that hatred which, if it be not checked in its growth by some providential event, becomes, in a certain time, hatred of society, then hatred of the human race, and then hatred of creation, and reveals itself by a vague and incessant desire to injure some living being, it matters not who.
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The most beautiful of altars, he said, is the soul of an unhappy creature consoled and thankfing God.
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Her soul trembled on her lips like a drop of dew on a flower.
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Que l'avenir soit un orient au lieu d'être un couchant, c'est la consolation de l'homme.
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Human intelligence discovered a way of perpetuating itself, one not only more durable and more resistant than architecture, but also simpler and easier. Architecture was dethroned. The stone letters of Orpheus gave way to the lead letters of Gutenburg. The book will kill the edifice.
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At the moment when her eyes closed, when all feeling vanished in her, she thought that she felt a touch of fire imprinted on her lips, a kiss more burning than the red-hot iron of the executioner.
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Every bird which flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw. Germination includes the hatching of a meteor and the tap of a swallow's bill breaking the egg, and it leads forward the birth of an earth-worm and the advent of Socrates.
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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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So long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Miserables cannot fail to be of use.
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Large, heavy, ragged black clouds hung like crape hammocks beneath the starry cope of the night. You would have said that they were the cobwebs of the firmament.
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Reason is intelligence taking exercise. Imagination is intelligence with an erection.
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He was fond of books, for they are cool and sure friends.
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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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A translation in verse . . . seems to me something absurd, impossible.
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Many great actions are committed in small struggles.
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God blesses man, not for having found but for having sought.
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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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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!