Victor Hugo Quotes
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Genuflection before the idol or the dollar destroys the muscles which walk and the will that moves.
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Sometimes he used a spade in his garden, and sometimes he read and wrote. He had but one name for these two kinds of labor; he called them gardening. ‘The Spirit is a garden,’ said he.
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I'd rather be hissed at for a good verse, than applauded for a bad one.
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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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...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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When two mouths, made sacred by love, draw near to each other to create, it is impossible, that above that ineffable kiss there should not be a thrill in the immense mystery of the stars.
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The saints were his friends, and blessed him; the monsters were his friends, and guarded him.
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That is to be two and to be but one. A man and a woman mingled into one angel. It is heaven.
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Ma vie est une énigme dont ton nom est le mot. (My life is an enigma, of which your name is the word.)
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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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Woe, alas, to those who have loved only bodies, forms, appearances! Death will rob them of everything. Try to love souls, you will find them again.
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Dirt has been shrewdly termed "misplaced material.
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The peculiarity of sunrise is to make us laugh at all our terrors of the night, and our laugh is always proportioned to the fear we have had.
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Gutenberg's invention of printing is the greatest event-the mother of revolution.
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Though one believes in nothing, there are moments in life when one accepts the religion of the temple nearest at hand.
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There are, as we know, powerful and illustrious atheists. At bottom, led back to the truth by their very force, they are not absolutely sure that they are atheists; it is with them only a question of definition, and in any case, if they do not believe in God, being great minds, they prove God.
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The truth of an upright man must be accepted on his own terms. Moreover, since natures vary, we must agree that all the beauties of human excellence may be fostered by faiths that we do not share.
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Anger may be foolish and absurd, and one may be wrongly irritated, but a man never feels outraged unless in some respect he is fundamentally right.
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He had, they said, tasted in succession all the apples of the tree of knowledge, and, whether from hunger or disgust, had ended by tasting the forbidden fruit.
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The hand which moves over the dial moves also among souls.
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Popularity? It's glory's small change.
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Solitude either develops the mental power, or renders men dull and vicious.
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Love partakes of the soul itself. it is of the same nature. like it, it is a divine spark, like it, it is incorruptible, indivisible, imperishable, it is the point of fire which is within us, which is immortal and infinite, which nothing can limit and nothing can extinguish.
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Nothing is really small; whoever is open to the deep penetration of nature knows this.