Quotes by Victor Hugo
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The devotion of one man had given strength and courage to all.

Knowledge is a weight added to conscience.

The terrible shock of his sentence had in some way broken that wall which separates us from the mystery of things beyond and which we call life.

Civil war.... What did the words mean? Was there any such thing as foreign war? Was not all warfare between men warfare between brothers?

On coming out of the chapel, a well can be seen on the left. There are two in this yard. You ask, Why is there no bucket and no pulley to this one? Because no water is drawn from it now. Why is no more water drawn from it? Because it is full of skeletons.

Waterloo is a battle of the first rank won by a captain of the second.

This conflict between right and fact has endured since the origins of society. To bring the duel to an end, to consolidate the pure ideal with the human reality, to make the right peacefully interpenetrate the fact, and the fact the right, this is the work of the wise.

The future has many names: For the weak, it means the unattainable. For the fearful, it means the unknown. For the courageous, it means opportunity.

Of all the things that God has made, the human heart is the one which sheds the most light, alas! and the most darkness.

O darkness, the sky is a gloomy precinct Whose door you close, and whose key the soul owns; And night divides itself in half, being diabolical and holy, Between Ilis, the black angel, and Christ, the starry Human Being.

Dry happiness is like dry bread. We eat, but we do not dine. I wish for the superfluous, for the useless, for the extravagant, for the too much, for that which is not good for anything.

To introduce a new play only six weeks after another has been banned is also a way to speak one's piece to the government. It proves that art and liberty can grow back in one night under the clumsy foot which crushes them.

Does not beauty confer a benefit upon us, even by the simple fact of being beautiful?

A poet who is a bad man is a degraded being, baser and more culpable than a bad man who is not a poet.

In winter there is no heat, no light, no noon, evening touches morning, there is fog, and mist, the window is frosted, and you cannot see clearly. The sky is but the mouth of a cave. The whole day is the cave.... Frightful season! Winter changes into stone the water of heaven and the heart of man.

Suffering engenders passion; and while the prosperous blind themselves, or go to sleep, the hatred of the unfortunate classes kindles its torch at some sullen or ill-constituted mind, which is dreaming in a corner, and sets to work to examine society. The examination of hatred is a terrible thing.

Every bird which flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw.

Don't educate your children to be rich. Educate them to be happy, so they know the value of things, not the price.

Years place at last a venerable crown upon a head.

Earnestness is the salt of eloquence.

These are true felicities. No joy beyond these joys. Love is the only ecstasy, everything else weeps.

The man who fights against his own country is never a hero.

At the approach of a certain dark hour, the light of Heaven fills those who are quitting the light of Earth.

I repeat, whether we be Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns us all.

A saint addicted to excessive self-abnegation is a dangerous associate; he may infect you with poverty, and a stiffening of those joints which are needed for advancement-in a word, with more renunciation than you care for-and so you flee the contagion.

Heaven, on occasion, half opens its arms to us; and that is the great moment.

So a voice in the mountain is enough to let loose an avalanche. A word too much may be followed by a caving in. If the word had not been spoken, it would not have happened.

Who then understands the reciprocal flux and reflux of the infinitely great and the infinitely small, the echoing of causes in the abysses of being, and the avalanches of creation?

My day's work will begin again the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley.

Genius is rare because the means of becoming one have not been available.

Night and the day, when united, Bring forth the beautiful light.

Everything speaks: the flowing airstream and the sailing halycon, the blade of grass, the flower, the bud, the element; did you imagine the universe to be otherwise?

One only needs to see a smile in a white crape bonnet in order to enter the palace of dreams.

A day will come when a cannon will be exhibited in museums, just as instruments of torture are now, and the people will be astonished that such a thing could have been.

Without seeking to comprehend the incomprehensible, he gazed upon it. He did not study God; he was dazzled by Him.

There is a secret drawer in every woman's heart.

Everything bows to success, even grammar.

Nothing can be sadder or more profound than to see a thousand things for the first and last time.

I am in the night. There is a being who has gone away and carried the heavens with her. Oh! to be laid side by side in the same tomb, hand clasped in hand, and from time to time, in the darkness, to caress a finger gently, that would suffice for my eternity.

The miserable's name is Man; he is agonizing in all climes, and he is groaning in all languages.

As for the bishop, the sight of the guillotine was a great shock to him, from which he recovered only slowly.

The guillotine is the ultimate expression of Law, and its name is vengeance; it is not neutral, nor does it allow us to remain neutral.

The heart becomes heroic through passion. It is no longer composed of anything but what is pure; it no longer rests upon anything but what is elevated and great.

All the human and animal manure which the world wastes, if returned to the land, instead of being thrown into the sea, would suffice to nourish the world.

Hypocrisy is nothing, in fact, but a horrible hopefulness.

I refuse the oration of all churches. I ask a prayer of all souls. I believe in God.

He asked himself... whether it was not outrageous for society to treat thus precisely those of its members who were the least well endowed in the division of goods made by chance, and consequently the most deserving of consideration.

Because things are not agreeable, said Jean Valjean, that is no reason for being unjust towards God.

God manifests himself to us in the first degree through the life of the universe, and in the second degree through the thought of man. The second manifestation is not less holy than the first. The first is named Nature, the second is named Art.

Argot is both a literary and a social phenomenon. What is argot, properly speaking? Argot is the language of misery.

What is admirable in the clash of young minds is that no one can foresee the spark that sets off an explosion or predict what kind of explosion it will be.

He sleeps. Although his fate was very strange, he lived. He died when he had no longer his angel. The thing came to pass simply, of itself, as the night comes when day is gone.

Cosette was not very timid by nature. There flowed in her veins some of the blood of the bohemian and the adventuress who runs barefoot. It will be remembered that she was more of a lark than a dove. There was a foundation of wildness and bravery in her.

He did not study God; he was dazzled by him.

To be wicked does not insure prosperity -- for the inn did not succeed well.

We do not comprehend everything, but we insult nothing.

On this point, the priest and the philosopher agree: We must die.

When we are at the end of life, to die means to go away; when we are at the beginning, to go away means to die.

There are many tongues to talk, and but few heads to think.

What is said about men often has as much influence upon their lives, and especially upon their destinies, as what they do.

Great grief is a divine and terrible radiance which transfigures the wretched.

For there are many great deeds done in the small struggles of life.

Work is the law of life, and to reject it as boredom is to submit to it as torment.

Love is like a tree: it grows by itself, roots itself deeply in our being and continues to flourish over a heart in ruin. The inexplicable fact is that the blinder it is, the more tenacious it is. It is never stronger than when it is completely unreasonable.

Philosophy is the microscope of thought.

Where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and which has the wider vision?

He loved books, those undemanding but faithful friends.

Love each other dearly always. There is scarcely anything else in the world but that: to love one another.

Social prosperity means man happy, the citizen free, the nation great.

A tempest ceases, a cyclone passes over, a wind dies down, a broken mast can be replaced, a leak can be stopped, a fire extinguished, but what will become of this enormous brute of bronze?

I encountered in the street a penniless young man who was in love. His hat was old and his jacket worn, with holes at the elbows; water soaked through his shoes, but starlight flooded through his soul.

Marius was of the temperament that sinks into grief and remains there; Cosette was of the sort that plunges in and comes out again.

One of the hardest labours of the just man is to expunge from his soul a malevolence which it is difficult to efface.

A bit of mould is a pleiad of flowers; a nebula is an ant-hill of stars.

To rove about, musing, that is to say loitering, is, for a philosopher, a good way of spending time.

At least you are mine! Soon -- in a few months, perhaps, my angel will sleep in my arms, will awaken in my arms, will live there. All your thought at all moments, all your looks will be for me; all my thought, all my moments, all my looks will be for you!

Human thought has no limit. At its risk and peril, it analyzes and dissects its own fascination. We could almost say that, by a sort of splendid reaction, it fascinates nature; the mysterious world surrounding us returns what it receives; it is likely that contemplators are contemplated.

Dear God! how beauty varies in nature and art.

It is only barbarous nations who have a sudden growth after a victory.

Press on! A better fate awaits thee.

With a tiny bit of effort, the nettle would be useful; if you neglect it, it becomes a pest. So then we kill it. How many men are like nettles My friends, there is no such thing as a weed and no such thing as a bad man. There are only bad cultivators.

But listen, there will be more joy in heaven over the tears of a repentant sinner than over the white robes of a hundred just men.

From Lordship to Eminence is but a step, and between Eminence and Holiness there is only the wisp of smoke from a burnt voting-slip.

Thus, during those nineteen years of torture and slavery, did this soul rise and fall at the same time. Light entered on the one side, and darkness on the other.

To know how to distinguish the agitation arising from covetousness, from the agitation arising from principles, to fight the one and aid the other, in this lies the genius and the power of great revolutionary leaders.

A sewer is a cynic. It tells All.

Popularity? It's glory's small change.

The straight line, a respectable optical illusion which ruins many a man.

Mothers arms are made of tenderness, And sweet sleep blesses the child who lies therein.

True or false, that which is said of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all in their destinies, as that which they do.

Love, thine is the future. Death, I use thee, but I hate thee. Citizens, there shall be in the future neither darkness nor thunderbolts; neither ferocious ignorance nor blood for blood.

It may be remarked in passing that success is an ugly thing. Men are deceived by its false resemblences to merit.

No matter who you are, the thought of so much suffering and degradation must cause you to shudder at the sight of a veil or cassock, those two shrouds of human invention.

The truth of an upright man must be accepted on his own terms. Moreover, since natures vary, we must agree that all the beauties of human excellence may be fostered by faiths that we do not share.

The great acts of love are done by those who are habitually performing small acts of kindness.