Victor Hugo Quotes

God will bless you,' said he, 'you are an angel since you take care of the flowers.' 'No,' she replied. 'I am the devil, but that's all the same to me.

The Parisian is to the French what the Athenian was to the Greeks: no one sleeps better than he, no one is more openly frivolous and idle, no one appears more heedless. But this is misleading. He is given to every kind of listlessness, but when there is glory to be won he may be inspired with every kind of fury. Give him a pike and he will enact the tenth of August, a musket and you have Austerlitz. He was the springboard of Napoleon and the mainstay of Danton. At the cry of "la patrie" he enrols, and at the call of liberty he tears up the pavements. Beware of him!

Humanity is our common lot. All men are made of the same clay. There is no difference, at least here on Earth, in the fate assigned to us. We come of the same void, inhabit the same flesh, are dissolved in the same ashes. But ignorance infecting the human substance turns it black, and that incurable blackness, gaining possession of the soul, becomes Evil.

When a woman is talking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes.

Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart; I breathe at this hour the fragrance of the lilacs, the violets, and the roses, as at twenty years ago.

There are plenty who regard a wall behind which something is happening as a very curious thing.

The peculiarity of sunrise is to make us laugh at all our terrors of the night, and our laugh is always proportioned to the fear we have had.

Revolution is the larva of civilization.

It is the end. But of what? The end of France? No. The end of kings? Yes.

A breath of Paris preserves the soul.

Is there not in every human soul a primitive spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this world and immortal in the next, which can be developed by goodness, kindled, lit up, and made to radiate, and which evil can never entirely extinguish.

At a certain depth of distress, the poor, in their stupor, groan no longer over evil, and are no longer thankful for good.

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

Equality does not mean that all plants must grow to the same height - a society of tall grass and dwarf trees, a jostle of conflicting jealousies. It means, in civic terms, an equal outlet for all talents; in political terms, that all votes will carry the same weight; and in religious terms that all beliefs will enjoy equal rights.

If I were Jesus Christ, I would save Judas.

The eye of a man should be still more reverent before the rising of a young maiden than before the rising of a star. The possibility of touch should increase respect. The down of the peach, the dust of the plum, the radiated crystal of snow, the butterfly’s wing powdered with feathers, are gross things beside that chastity that does not even know it is chaste. The young maiden is only the glimmer of a dream and is not yet statue. Her alcove is hidden in the shadows of the ideal. The indiscreet touch of the eye desecrates this dim penumbra. Here, to gaze, is to profane.

Wisdom and eloquence are not always united.

The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.

What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past.

Pain is as diverse as man. One suffers as one can.

If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.

I was dying when you came.

I'd like a drink. I desire to forget life. Life is a hideous invention by somebody I don't know. It doesn't last, and it's good for nothing. You break your neck simply living.

She worked in order to live, and presently fell in love, also in order to live, for the heart, too, has its hunger.

To know, to think, to dream. That is everything.

Excitement is not enjoyment: in calmness lies true pleasure. The most precious wines are sipped, not bolted at a swallow.

Life is a theatre set in which there are but few practicable entrances.

The greatest products of architecture are less the works of individuals than of society; rather the offspring of a nation's effort, than the inspired flash of a man of genius.

Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.

Progress is the life-style of man.

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.

Tobacco is the plant that converts thoughts into dreams.

The wise man is he who knows when and how to stop

A writer is a world trapped in a person.

Great buildings, like great mountains, are the work of centuries.

Peace is the virtue of civilization. War is its crime.

Common sense is in spite of, not as the result of education.

A strange thing has happened, do you know? I am in darkness. There is a person who, departing, took away the sun.

War can only be qualified by its object, and there is neither foreign war nor civil war, there is only just or unjust war.

People do not lack strength; they lack will.

To be a saint is the exception; to be a just person is the rule. Err, stumble, commit sin, but be one of the just.

The delight we inspire in others has this enchanting peculiarity that, far from being diminished like every other reflection, it returns to us more radiant than ever.

Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices are the real murderers. The great dangers lie within ourselves.

Do you hear the people sing? Singing a song of angry men

My greatness does not extend to this shelf.

There is a sacred horror about everything grand. It is easy to admire mediocrity and hills; but whatever is too lofty, a genius as well as a mountain, an assembly as well as a masterpiece, seen too near, is appalling.

Nature has made a pebble and a female. The lapidary makes the diamond, and the lover makes the woman.

There is such a thing as the pressure of darkness.