Victor Hugo Quotes
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A bit of mould is a pleiad of flowers; a nebula is an ant-hill of stars.
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Night and the day, when united, Bring forth the beautiful light.
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The first proof of charity in a priest, and especially a bishop, is poverty.
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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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A wretched woman is more unfortunate than a wretched man.
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Nothing is more dangerous than to stop working. It is a habit that can soon be lost, one that is easily neglected and hard to resume. A measure of day-dreaming is a good thing, like a drug prudently used ... But too much submerges and drowns. Woe to the intellectual worker who allows himself to lapse wholly from positive thinking into day-dreaming. He thinks he can easily change back, and tells himself that it is all one. He is wrong! To substitute day-dreaming for thought is to confuse poison with a source of nourishment.
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She was a lovely blonde, with fine teeth. She had gold and pearls for her dowry; but her gold was on her head, and her pearls were in her mouth.
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Men hate those to whom they have to lie.
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There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.
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To put everything in balance is good, to put everything in harmony is better.
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The spirit of God, like the sun, always gives all its light at once. The spirit of man resembles the pale moon, which has its phases, its absences and its returns, its lucidity and its spots, its fullness and its disappearance, which borrows all its light from the rays of the sun, and which still dares to intercept them on occasion.
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Let the one fight for his flag, and the other for his ideal, and let them both imagine that they are fighting for the country; the strife will be colossal.
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Progress is not accomplished in one stage.
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I advance in life, I grow more simple, and I become more and more patriotic for humanity.
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A stout heart may be ruined in fortune but not in spirit.
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Dreaming is happiness. Waiting is life.
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Loving is half of believing.
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On this point, the priest and the philosopher agree: We must die.
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History has its truth, and so has legend. Legendary truth is of another nature than historical truth. Legendary truth is invention whose result is reality. Furthermore, history and legend have the same goal; to depict eternal man beneath momentary man.
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I have examined the death penalty under each of its two aspects: as a direct action, and as an indirect one. What does it come down to? Nothing but something horrible and useless, nothing but a way of shedding blood that is called a crime when an individual commits it, but is sadly called "justice" when society brings it about. Make no mistake, you lawmakers and judges, in the eyes of God as in those of conscience, what is a crime when individuals do it is no less an offense when society commits the deed.
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I refuse the oration of all churches. I ask a prayer of all souls. I believe in God.
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Those who pray always are necessary to those who never pray. In our view, the whole question is in the amount of thought that is mingled with prayer.
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Kings are for nations in their swaddling-clothes: France has attained her majority.
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A doctor’s door should never be closed, a priest's door should always be open.