Victor Hugo Quotes
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Humanity is our common lot. All men are made of the same clay. There is no difference, at least here on Earth, in the fate assigned to us. We come of the same void, inhabit the same flesh, are dissolved in the same ashes. But ignorance infecting the human substance turns it black, and that incurable blackness, gaining possession of the soul, becomes Evil.
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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 most excellent symbol of the people is the paving stone. One walks on it until it falls on one's head.
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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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Melancholy is the happiness of being sad.
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I see black light (his last words).
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In the Twentieth Century war will be dead, the scaffold will be dead, hatred will be dead, frontier boundaries will be dead, dogmas will be dead; man will live. He will possess something higher than all these-a great country, the whole earth, and a great hope, the whole heaven.
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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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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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A wretched woman is more unfortunate than a wretched man.
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What is the cat?" he exclaimed. "It is a corrective. God, having made the mouse, said, 'I've made a blunder.' And he made the cat. The cat is the erratum of the mouse. The mouse, plus the cat, Is the revised and corrected proof of creation.
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There is no more sovereign eloquence than the truth in indignation.
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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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If you wish to understand what Revolution is, call it Progress; and if you wish to understand what Progress is, call it Tomorrow.
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Science is continually correcting what it has said. Fertile corrections... science is a ladder... poetry is a winged flight... An artistic masterpiece exists for all time... Dante does not efface Homer.
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As for methods of prayer, all of them are good as long as they are sincere.
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To die for lack of love is horrible. The asphyxia of the soul.
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There is no rapture in the love which is prompted by esteem; such affection is lasting, not passionate.
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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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Music is the vapor of art. It is to poetry what reverie is to thought, what fluid is to solid, what the ocean of clouds is to the ocean of waves.
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Popularity? It's glory's small change.
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Knowledge is a weight added to conscience.
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All who suffer are full of hatred; all who live drag a remorse: the dead alone have broken their chains.
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Let us have compassion for those under chastisement. Alas, who are we ourselves? Who am I and who are you? Whence do we come and is it quite certain that we did nothing before we were born? This earth is not without some resemblance to a gaol. Who knows but that man is a victim of divine justice? Look closely at life. It is so constituted that one senses punishment everywhere.