Victor Hugo Quotes
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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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This book should be read as one would read the book of a dead man.
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By making himself a priest made himself a demon.
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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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Love is the only future God offers.
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Anger may be foolish and absurd, and one may be wrongly irritated, but a man never feels outraged unless in some respect he is fundamentally right.
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A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in--what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.
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There is a spectacle more grand than the sea; it is heaven; there is a spectacle more grand than heaven; it is the conscience.
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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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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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I advance in life, I grow more simple, and I become more and more patriotic for humanity.
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But alas, if I have not maintained my victory, it is God's fault for not making man and the devil of equal strength.
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We are on the side of religion as opposed to religions, and we are among those who believe in the wretched inadequacy of sermons and the sublimity of prayer.
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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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When the heart is dry the eye is dry.
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The cruel of heart have their own black happiness.
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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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Often when we think we are knotting one thread, we are tying quite another.
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A day will come when a cannon will be exhibited in museums, just as instruments of torture are now, and the people will be astonished that such a thing could have been.
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Every step which the intelligence of Europe has taken has been in spite of the clerical party.
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No matter who you are, the thought of so much suffering and degradation must cause you to shudder at the sight of a veil or cassock, those two shrouds of human invention.
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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.