Victor Hugo Quotes
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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.
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Style is the substance of the subject called unceasingly to the surface.
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Nothing can be more depressing than to expose, naked to the light of thought, the hideous growth of argot. Indeed it is like a sort of repellent animal intended to dwell in darkness which has been dragged out of its cloaca. One seems to see a horned and living creature viciously struggling to be restored to the place where it belongs. One word is like a claw, another like a sightless and bleeding eye; and there are phrases which clutch like the pincers of a crab. And all of it is alive with the hideous vitality of things that have organized themselves amid disorganization.
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Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings.
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An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.
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The last resort of kings, the cannonball. The last resort of the people, the paving stone.
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Joy's smile is much closer to tears than laughter.
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Pain is as diverse as man. One suffers as one can.
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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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A library implies an act of faith.
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Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant.
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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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What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past.
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Architecture has recorded the great ideas of the human race. Not only every religious symbol, but every human thought has its page in that vast book.
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A society that admits misery, a humanity that admits war, seem to me an inferior society and a debased humanity; it is a higher society and a more elevated humanity at which I am aiming - a society without kings, a humanity without barriers.
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Nature has made a pebble and a female. The lapidary makes the diamond, and the lover makes the woman.
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Love is jealous, and ingenious in self-torture in proportion as it is pure and intense.
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Ce besoin de l’immatériel est le plus vivace de tous. Il faut du pain; mais avant le pain, il faut l’idéal.
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You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving. The great acts of love are done by those who are habitually performing small acts of kindness. We pardon to the extent that we love. Love is knowing that even when you are alone, you will never be lonely again. & great happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved. Loved for ourselves. & even loved in spite of ourselves.
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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.
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Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace.
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Where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incident, chaos will soon reign.