Victor Hugo Quotes
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As we have explained, in first love the soul is taken long before the body; later the body is taken long before the soul; sometimes the soul is not taken at all.
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"I should hope so," Laigle replied, "for my coat and I live comfortably together. It has assumed all my wrinkles, does not hurt me anywhere, has moulded itself on my deformities, and is complacent to all my movements, and 1 only feel its presence because it keeps me warm."
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Diamonds are to be found only in the darkness of the earth, and truth in the darkness of the mind.
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Common sense is in spite of, not as the result of education.
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The little people must be sacred to the big ones, and it is from the rights of the weak that the duty of the strong is comprised.
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Brothers, he who dies here dies in the radiance of the future, and we are entering a tomb all flooded with the dawn.
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Do not forget, do not ever forget, that you have promised me to use the money to make yourself an honest man.' Valjean, who did not recall having made any promise, was silent. The bishop had spoken the words slowly and deliberately. He concluded with a solemn emphasis: Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to what is evil but to what is good. I have bought your soul to save it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God.
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Rhyme, that enslaved queen, that supreme charm of our poetry, that creator of our meter.
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There is a determined though unseen bravery that defends itself foot by foot in the darkness against the fatal invasions of necessity and dishonesty. Noble and mysterious triumphs that no eye sees, and no fame rewards, and no flourish of triumph salutes. Life, misfortunes, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are battlefields that have their heroes; obscure heroes, sometimes greater than the illustrious heroes.
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Justice has its anger, my lord Bishop, and the wrath of justice is an element of progress. Whatever else may be said of it, the French Revolution was the greatest step forward by mankind since the coming of Christ. It was unfinished, I agree, but still it was sublime. It released the untapped springs of society; it softened hearts, appeased, tranquilized, enlightened, and set flowing through the world the tides of civilization. It was good. The French Revolution was the anointing of humanity.
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Sorrow is a fruit. God does not make it grow on limbs too weak to bear it.
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Idleness is the heaviest of all oppressions.
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A joyous little creature, so beautiful, It was as if a gate of Heaven opened as she came in.
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Should we continue to look upwards? Is the light we can see in the sky one of those which will presently be extinguished? The ideal is terrifying to behold... brilliant but threatened on all sides by the dark forces that surround it: nevertheless, no more in danger than a star in the jaws of the clouds.
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When a man is out of sight, it is not too long before he is out of mind.
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The drama is complete poetry. The ode and the epic contain it only in germ; it contains both of them in a state of high development, and epitomizes both.
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The man who does not know other languages, unless he is a man of genius, necessarily has deficiencies in his ideas.
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Curiosity is gluttony. To see is to devour.
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Amnesty is as good for those who give it as for those who receive it. It has the admirable quality of bestowing mercy on both sides.
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We see past time in a telescope and present time in a microscope. Hence the apparent enormities of the present.
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I had a dream my life would be different from this hell I am living, so different from what it seemed. Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.
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To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.
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L'œil était dans la tombe et regardait Caïn.
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Where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and which has the wider vision?