Victor Hugo Quotes
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God became man, granted. The devil became a woman.
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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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A saint addicted to excessive self-abnegation is a dangerous associate; he may infect you with poverty, and a stiffening of those joints which are needed for advancement-in a word, with more renunciation than you care for-and so you flee the contagion.
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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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By making himself a priest made himself a demon.
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One only needs to see a smile in a white crape bonnet in order to enter the palace of dreams.
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Without at all invalidating what we have just said, we believe that a perpetual remembrance of the tomb is proper for the living. On this point, the priest and the philosopher agree: We must die.
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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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I dislike wealth and prosperity, especially that of other men.
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It is sad to tell, but after having tried society, which had caused his misfortune, he tried Providence which created society, and condemned it also.
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Art needs no spur beyond itself.
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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.
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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.
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Success is a very hideous thing. Its false resemblance to merit deceives men.
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Love is the only future God offers.
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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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...mothers are often fondest of the child which has caused them the greatest pain.
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To live a life which is a perpetual falsehood is to suffer unknown tortures.
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The real, native South Seas food is lousy. You can't eat it.
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Joy is the reflex of terror.
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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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If the infinite had no me, then me would be its limit. It would not be the infinite, therefore it would not be.
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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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When, like an Emir of tyrannic power, Sirius appears, and on the horizon black Bids countless stars pursue their mighty track.