Victor Hugo Quotes
-
They adored each other; but still the permanent and the immutable subsist. We may love and laugh, pout, clasp hands, smile, and exchange endearments, but that does not affect eternity. Two lovers hide in the dusk of evening, amid flowers and the twittering of birds, and enchant each other with their hearts shinning in their eyes; but the stars in their course still circle through infinite space.
-
There is a material advancement; we desire it. There is, also, a moral grandeur; we hold fast to it.
-
God was bored by him.
-
[T]he small is great, the great is small; all is in equilibrium in necessity.
-
If the infinite had no me, then me would be its limit. It would not be the infinite, therefore it would not be.
-
What's our baggage? Only vows, Happiness, and all our care, And the flower that sweetly shows Nestling lightly in your hair.
-
To be a saint is the exception; to be a just person is the rule. Err, stumble, commit sin, but be one of the just.
-
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.
-
Do you hear the people sing Lost in the valley of the night? It is the music of a people Who are climbing to the light. For the wretched of the earth There is a flame that never dies. Even the darkest night will end And the sun will rise.
-
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.
-
God became man, granted. The devil became a woman.
-
If we must suffer, let us suffer nobly.
-
I believe in religion against the religious; in the pitifulness of orisons, and in the sublimity of prayer.
-
One only needs to see a smile in a white crape bonnet in order to enter the palace of dreams.
-
These are dark radiances. They have no suspicion that they are to be pitied. Certainly they are so. He who does not weep does not see. They are to be admired and pitied, as one would both pity and admire a being at once night and day, without eyes beneath his lashes but with a star on his brow.
-
That is to be two and to be but one. A man and a woman mingled into one angel. It is heaven.
-
Success is a very hideous thing. Its false resemblance to merit deceives men.
-
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.
-
Ecclesiastes names thee Almighty, the Maccabees name thee Creator, the Epistle to the Ephesians names thee Liberty, Baruch names thee Immensity, the Psalms name thee Wisdom and Truth, John names thee Light, the Book of Kings names thee Lord, Exodus names thee Providence, Leviticus Sanctity, Esdras Justice, creation names thee God, man names thee Father; but Solomon names thee Compassion, which is the most beautiful of all thy names.
-
Genius is rare because the means of becoming one have not been available.
-
How frightened hypocrisy hastens to defend itself.
-
But alas, if I have not maintained my victory, it is God's fault for not making man and the devil of equal strength.
-
When, like an Emir of tyrannic power, Sirius appears, and on the horizon black Bids countless stars pursue their mighty track.
-
Let us say it now: to be blind and to be loved, is indeed, upon this earth where nothing is complete, one of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness.