Victor Hugo Quotes
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It has become necessary to call the attention of European governments to a fact which is apparently so insignificant that the governments seem not to notice it. The fact is this: an entire people is being annihilated. Where? In Europe. Are there witnesses? One witness, the entire world. Do the governments see it? No.
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Astronomy, that micography of heaven, is the most magnificent of the sciences. ... Astronomy has its clear side and its luminous side; on its clear side it is tinctured with algebra, on its luminous side with poetry.
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Men hate those to whom they have to lie.
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"Dost thou understand? I love thee!" he cried again."What love!" said the unhappy girl with a shudder.He resumed, – "The love of a damned soul.
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Often when we think we are knotting one thread, we are tying quite another.
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I dislike wealth and prosperity, especially that of other men.
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Nothing can be sadder or more profound than to see a thousand things for the first and last time. To journey is to be born and die each minute...All the elements of life are in constant flight from us, with darkness and clarity intermingled, the vision and the eclipse; we look and hasten, reaching out our hands to clutch; every happening is a bend in the road...and suddenly we have grown old. We have a sense of shock and gathering darkness; ahead is a black doorway; the life that bore us is a flagging horse, and a veiled stranger is waiting in the shadows to unharness us.
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If a man has his throat cut in Paris, it's a murder. If 50,000 people are murdered in the east, it is a question.
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The paradise of the rich is made out of the hell of the poor.
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It is ourselves we have to fear. Prejudice is the real robber, and vice the real murderer.
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A writer is a world trapped in a person.
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Art needs no spur beyond itself.
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The realities of life do not allow themselves to be forgotten.
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A library implies an act of faith which generations, still in darkness hid, sign in their night in witness of the dawn.
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The soul does not give itself up to despair until it has exhausted all illusions.
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Freedom begins where it ends ignorance.
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...We pray together, we are afraid together, and then we go to sleep. Even if Satan came into the house, no one would interfere. After all, what is there to fear in this house? There is always one with us who is the strongest. Satan may visit our house, but the good Lord lives here.
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The cruel of heart have their own black happiness.
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He was at his own request and through his own complicity driven out of all his happinesses one after the other; and he had this sorrow, that after having lost Cosette wholly in one day, he was afterwards obliged to lose her again in detail.
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A wedding is not house-keeping.
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I'd like a drink. I desire to forget life. Life is a hideous invention by somebody I don't know. It doesn't last, and it's good for nothing. You break your neck simply living.
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Loving is almost a substitute for thinking. Love is a burning forgetfulness of all other things. How shall we ask passion to be logical?
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Do you know what friendship is?' he asked. 'Yes,' replied the gypsy; 'it is to be brother and sister; two souls which touch without mingling, two fingers on one hand.' 'And love?' pursued Gringoire. 'Oh! love!' said she, and her voice trembled, and her eye beamed. '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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God has set his intentions in the flowers, in the dawn, in the spring, it is his will that we should love.