Victor Hugo Quotes
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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 you are stone, be magnetic; if a plant, be sensitive; but if you are human be love.
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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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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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Emotion is always new and the word has always served; therein lies the difficulty of expressing emotion.
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He was fond of books, for they are cool and sure friends.
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Her soul trembled on her lips like a drop of dew on a flower.
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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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Go to sleep in peace. God is awake.
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Many great actions are committed in small struggles.
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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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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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With a tiny bit of effort, the nettle would be useful; if you neglect it, it becomes a pest. So then we kill it. How many men are like nettles My friends, there is no such thing as a weed and no such thing as a bad man. There are only bad cultivators.
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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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The realities of life do not allow themselves to be forgotten.
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A translation in verse . . . seems to me something absurd, impossible.
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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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The most beautiful of altars, he said, is the soul of an unhappy creature consoled and thankfing God.
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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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It may be remarked in passing that success is an ugly thing. Men are deceived by its false resemblences to merit.
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Do not ask the name of the person who seeks a bed for the night. He who is reluctant to give his name is the one who most needs shelter.
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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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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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All who suffer are full of hatred; all who live drag a remorse: the dead alone have broken their chains.