Victor Hugo Quotes
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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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God is behind everything, but everything hides God.
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When the heart is dry the eye is dry.
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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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To lie a little is not possible: he who lies, lies the whole lie.
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Right is right only when entire.
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Not seeing people permits us to imagine them with every perfection.
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It is not so easy to keep silent when the silence is a lie.
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It is the essence of truth that it is never excessive. Why should it exaggerate? There is that which should be destroyed and that which should be simply illuminated and studied. How great is the force of benevolent and searching examination! We must not resort to the flame where only light is required.
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I was always a lover of soft-winged things.
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Whether we be Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns us all. Ever since history has been written, ever since philosophy has meditated, misery has been the garment of the human race; the moment has at length arrived for tearing off that rag, and for replacing, upon the naked limbs of the Man-People, the sinister fragment of the past with the grand purple robe of the dawn.
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We say and exclaim within ourselves without breaking silence, in a tumult where everything speaks except our mouths. The realities of the soul are none the less real for being invisible and impalpable.
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The man who fights against his own country is never a hero.
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In my old age there is a coming into flower. My body wanes; my mind waxes.
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What says the law? You will not kill. How does it say it? By killing!
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The world of sleep has an existence of its own.
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Everything Changes. The only thing that remains immovable across the centuries and fixes the character of a people is cooking.
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A queen, devoid of beauty is not queen; She needs the royalty of beauty's mien.
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And, moreover, when it happens that both are sincere and good, nothing will mix and amalgamate more easily than an old priest and an old soldier. In reality, they are the same kind of man. One has devoted himself to country upon earth, the other to his country in heaven; there is no other difference.
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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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God knows better than we do what we need.
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What I feel for you seems less of earth and more of a cloudless heaven.
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He who despairs is wrong.
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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.