Victor Hugo Quotes
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Proverty and wealth are comparative sins.
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No religion but blasphemes a little.
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To live a life which is a perpetual falsehood is to suffer unknown tortures.
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Not seeing people allows you to think of them as perfect in all kinds of ways.
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Another story must begin!
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Equality does not mean that all plants must grow to the same height - a society of tall grass and dwarf trees, a jostle of conflicting jealousies. It means, in civic terms, an equal outlet for all talents; in political terms, that all votes will carry the same weight; and in religious terms that all beliefs will enjoy equal rights.
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It is not so easy to keep silent when the silence is a lie.
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Because a fact seems strange to you, you conclude that it is not one. ... All science, however, commences by being strange. Science is successive. It goes from one wonder to another. It mounts by a ladder. The science of to-day would seem extravagant to the science of a former time. Ptolemy would believe Newton mad.
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Night and the day, when united, Bring forth the beautiful light.
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The delight we inspire in others has this enchanting peculiarity that, far from being diminished like every other reflection, it returns to us more radiant than ever.
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Wisdom and eloquence are not always united.
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Right is right only when entire.
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Strong and rare natures are thus created; misery, almost always a stepmother, is sometimes a mother; privation gives birth to power of soul and mind; distress is the nurse of self-respect; misfortune is a good breast for great souls.
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There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.
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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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I'm not in the world to guard my own life, but to guard souls.
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The soul does not give itself up to despair until it has exhausted all illusions.
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Our mind is enriched by what we receive, our heart by what we give.
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We are all under sentence of death, but with a sort of indefinite reprieve.
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Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart.
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The merciful precepts of Christ will at last suffuse the Code and it will glow with their radiance. Crime will be considered an illness with its own doctors to replace your judges and its hospitals to replace your prisons. Liberty shall be equated with health. Ointments and oil shall be applied to limbs that were once shackled and branded. Infirmities that once were scourged with anger shall now be bathed with love. The cross in place of the gallows: sublime and yet so simple.
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I tried. But I feel that I haven't given utterance to the thousandth part of what lies within me. When I go to the grave I can say as others have said, "I have finished my day's work." But I cannot say, "I have finished my life." My day's work will begin again the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley; it is a thoroughfare. It closes on the twilight, but opens on the dawn.
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Ah! There you are! he exclaimed, looking at Jean Valjean. I'm so glad to see you. Well, but how is this? I gave you the candlesticks too, which are of silver like the rest, and for which you can certainly get two hundred francs. Why did you not carry them away with your forks and spoons?
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Everything Changes. The only thing that remains immovable across the centuries and fixes the character of a people is cooking.