Victor Hugo Quotes
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Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause.
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By putting forward the hands of the clock you shall not advance the hour.
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The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. It is marvelous, yet simple.
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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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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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In the opera we call love, the libretto is almost nothing.
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Taste is the common sense of genius.
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In this world, which is so plainly the antechamber of another, there are no happy men. The true division of humanity is between those who live in light and those who live in darkness. Our aim must be to diminish the number of the latter and increase the number of the former. That is why we demand education and knowledge.
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The animal is ignorant of the fact that he knows. The man is aware of the fact that he is ignorant.
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It is by suffering that human beings become angels.
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Never had the sky been more studded with stars and more charming, the trees more trembling, the odor of the grass more penetrating; never had the birds fallen asleep among the leaves with a sweeter noise; never had all the harmonies of universal serenity responded more thoroughly to the inward music of love; never had Marius been more captivated, more happy, more ecstatic.
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Fashions have done more harm than revolutions.
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When a man understands the art of seeing, he can trace the spirit of an age and the features of a king even in the knocker on a door.
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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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Hell is an outrage on humanity. When you tell me that your deity made you in his image, I reply that he must have been very ugly.
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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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Where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incident, chaos will soon reign.
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Our acts make or mar us, we are the children of our own deeds.
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A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.
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Civil war? What does that mean? Is there any foreign war? Isn't every war fought between men, between brothers?
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I am a soul. I know well that what I shall render up to the grave is not myself. That which is myself will go elsewhere. Earth, thou art not my abyss!
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Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age.
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It is most pleasant to commit a just action which is disagreeable to someone whom one does not like.
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Joy's smile is much closer to tears than laughter.