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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The saints were his friends, and blessed him; the monsters were his friends, and guarded him.
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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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Her soul trembled on her lips like a drop of dew on a flower.
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Right is right only when entire.
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I believe in religion against the religious; in the pitifulness of orisons, and in the sublimity of prayer.
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There are things stronger than the strongest man.
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History has its truth; and so has legend hers.
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The most terrible of motives and the most unanswerable of responses: Because.
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In the animal world no creature born to be a dove turns into a scavenger. This happens only among men.
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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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Excitement is not enjoyment: in calmness lies true pleasure. The most precious wines are sipped, not bolted at a swallow.
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God whose gifts in gracious flood Unto all who seek are sent, Only asks you to be good And is content.
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This conflict between right and fact has endured since the origins of society. To bring the duel to an end, to consolidate the pure ideal with the human reality, to make the right peacefully interpenetrate the fact, and the fact the right, this is the work of the wise.
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Table talk and Lovers' talk equally elude the grasp; Lovers' talk is clouds, table talk is smoke.
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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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The real, native South Seas food is lousy. You can't eat it.
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Since we shall love each other, I shall be great and you shall be rich.
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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.
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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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Promise to give me a kiss on my brow when I am dead. – I shall feel it." She dropped her head again on Marius' knees, and her eyelids closed. He thought the poor soul had departed. Eponine remained motionless. All at once, at the very moment when Marius fancied her asleep forever, she slowly opened her eyes in which appeared the sombre profundity of death, and said to him in a tone whose sweetness seemed already to proceed from another world: – "And by the way, Monsieur Marius, I believe that I was a little bit in love with you.
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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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A day will come when all nations on our continent will form a European brotherhood... A day will come when we shall see... the United States of America and the United States of Europe face to face, reaching out for each other across the seas.
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God blesses man, not for having found but for having sought.