Victor Hugo Quotes
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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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Reaction - a boat which is going against the current but which does not prevent the river from flowing on.
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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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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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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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An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.
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Habit is the nursery of errors.
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The last resort of kings, the cannonball. The last resort of the people, the paving stone.
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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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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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The ode lives upon the ideal, the epic upon the grandiose, the drama upon the real.
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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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I will be Chateaubriand or nothing.
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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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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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A library implies an act of faith.
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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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Pain is as diverse as man. One suffers as one can.
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You say, "Where goest Thou?" I cannot tell, And still go on. But if the way be straight I cannot go amiss: before me lies Dawn and the day: the night behind me: that Suffices me: I break the bounds: I see, And nothing more; believe and nothing less. My future is not one of my concerns.
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No doubt it was necessary to civilize man in relation to man. That work is already advanced and is making progress every day. But man must be civilized also in relation to nature.