She was sad with an obscure sadness of which she had not the secret herself. There was in her whole person the stupor of a life ended but never commenced.
Victor HugoNobody knows like a woman how to say things at the same time sweet and profound. Sweetness and depth, this is all of woman; this is all of Heaven.
Victor HugoA creditor is worse than a slave-owner; for the master owns only your person, but a creditor owns your dignity, and can command it.
Victor HugoWe would be ashamed of our best behavior if the people knew the motives of our behaving so.
Victor HugoWith 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.
Victor HugoStrange to say, the luminous world is the invisible world; the luminous world is that which we do not see. Our eyes of flesh see only night.
Victor HugoIt is those books which a man possesses but does not read which constitute the most suspicious evidence against him.
Victor HugoBrothers, he who dies here dies in the radiance of the future, and we are entering a tomb all flooded with the dawn.
Victor HugoThese are dark radiances. They have no suspicion that they are to be pitied. Certainly they are so. He who does not weep does not see. They are to be admired and pitied, as one would both pity and admire a being at once night and day, without eyes beneath his lashes but with a star on his brow.
Victor HugoThere is will in the thought, there is none in the dream. The dream, which is completely spontaneous, takes and keeps, even in the gigantic and the ideal, the form of our mind. Nothing springs more directly and more sincerely from the very bottom of our souls than our unreflected and indefinite aspirations towards the splendours of destiny.
Victor HugoIn the animal world no creature born to be a dove turns into a scavenger. This happens only among men.
Victor HugoHe, who every morning plans the transactions of the day, and follows that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through a labyrinth of the most busy life.
Victor HugoThe beginning as well as the end of all his thoughts was hatred of human law, that hatred which, if it be not checked in its growth by some providential event, becomes, in a certain time, hatred of society, then hatred of the human race, and then hatred of creation, and reveals itself by a vague and incessant desire to injure some living being, it matters not who.
Victor HugoEverybody has noticed the way cats stop and loiter in a half-open door. Hasn't everyone said to a cat: For heavens sake why don't you come in? With opportunity half-open in front of them, there are men who have a similar tendency to remain undecided between two solutions, at the risk of being crushed by fate abruptly closing the opportunity. The overprudent, cats as they are, and because they are cats, sometimes run more danger than the bold
Victor HugoWhen grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age.
Victor HugoHe would give all of his clothes to his servant, admonishing him NOT to return them until he had completed his day's work.
Victor HugoThe greatest blunders, like the thickest ropes, are often compounded of a multitude of strands. Take the rope apart, separate it into the small threads that compose it, and you can break them one by one. You think, That is all there was! But twist them all together and you have something tremendous.
Victor HugoCivil war.... What did the words mean? Was there any such thing as "foreign war"? Was not all warfare between men warfare between brothers?
Victor Hugo