Victor Hugo Quotes
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Reaction - a boat which is going against the current but which does not prevent the river from flowing on.
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How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said.
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Wherever the Turkish hoof trods, no grass grows.
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The wise man does not grow old, but ripens.
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To be perfectly happy it does not suffice to possess happiness, it is necessary to have deserved it.
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The ode lives upon the ideal, the epic upon the grandiose, the drama upon the real.
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I will be Chateaubriand or nothing.
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Liberation is not deliverance.
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Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.
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The brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over we realize this: that the human race has been roughly handled, but that it has advanced.
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Dear God! how beauty varies in nature and art. In a woman the flesh must be like marble; in a statue the marble must be like flesh.
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It is by suffering that human beings become angels.
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Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization.
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There are no rules, no models; rather, there are no rules other than the general laws of Nature.
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An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.
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Be like the bird who, pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing she hath wings.
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Habit is the nursery of errors.
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Because one doesn't like the way things are is no reason to be unjust towards God.
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The last resort of kings, the cannonball. The last resort of the people, the paving stone.
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Every diminution of the liberty of the press is followed by a diminution of civilization. Wherever we see the freedom of the press interfered with, there we see the nutrition of the human family interrupted.
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Inanimate objects sometimes appear endowed with a strange power of sight. A statue notices, a tower watches, the face of an edifice contemplates.
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Jésus a pleuré, Voltaire a souri; c’est de cette larme divine et de ce sourire humain qu’est faite la douceur de la civilisation actuelle.
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There have been in this century only one great man and one great thing: Napoleon and liberty. For want of the great man, let us have the great thing.
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Separated lovers cheat absence by a thousand fancies which have their own reality. They are prevented from seeing one another and they cannot write; nevertheless they find countless mysterious ways of corresponding, by sending each other the song of birds, the scent of flowers, the laughter of children.