Victor Hugo Quotes

Men become accustomed to poison by degrees.

In the domain of art there is no light without heat.

To lie a little is not possible: he who lies, lies the whole lie.

In short, I am doing what I can, I suffer with the same universal suffering, and I try to assuage it, I possess only the puny forces of a man, and I cry to all: “Help me!

Need is a low door which, when we must by stern necessity pass through, forces the greatest to bend down the most.

The most ferocious animals are disarmed by caresses to their young.

Religion, Society, and Nature--these are the three struggles of man.

A fall from such a height is rarely straight downwards.

During a wise man's whole life, his destiny holds his philosophy in a state of siege.

I was dying when you came.

Every blade has two edges; he who wounds with one wounds himself with the other.

Anger may be foolish and absurd, and one may be wrongly irritated, but a man never feels outraged unless in some respect he is fundamentally right.

Popularity - a piece of faded tinsel, that is out of date.

Friend is sometimes a word devoid of meaning; enemy, never.

In my old age there is a coming into flower. My body wanes; my mind waxes.

In love, such a word, whispered, is a mysterious kiss of the soul to the soul.

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

Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats.

The smaller it is the heart, more hatred houses.

Homer is one of the men of genius who solve that fine problem of art - the finest of all, perhaps - truly to depict humanity by the enlargement of man: that is, to generate the real in the ideal.

There is such a thing as the pressure of darkness.

Music is the vapor of art. It is to poetry what reverie is to thought, what fluid is to solid, what the ocean of clouds is to the ocean of waves.

Strange 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.

The tomb is not a blind alley: it is a thoroughfare. It closes on the twilight. It opens on the dawn.

Loving is almost a substitute for thinking. Love is a burning forgetfulness of all other things. How shall we ask passion to be logical?

A little girl without a doll is almost as unhappy, and quite as impossible, as a woman without children." from chapter VIII of Les Miserables

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

The man is placed where the Earth ends, the woman, where the heaven starts.

Close by the Rights of Man, at the least set beside them, are the Rights of the Spirit.

I was always a lover of soft-winged things.

Oh Lord! Open the doors of night for me So that I may leave this place and disappear.

The real, native South Seas food is lousy. You can't eat it.

There is no rapture in the love which is prompted by esteem; such affection is lasting, not passionate.

One drop of wine is enough to redden a whole glass of water.

Hope is a delusion; no hand can grasp a wave or a shadow.

He reached for his pocket, and found there, only reality

My greatness does not extend to this shelf.

He would give all of his clothes to his servant, admonishing him NOT to return them until he had completed his day's work.

Do not economize on the hymeneal rites; do not prune them of their splendor, nor split farthings on the day when you are radiant. A wedding is not house-keeping.

The jostling of young minds against each other has this wonderful attribute, that one can never foresee the spark, nor predict the flash. What will spring up in a moment? Nobody knows.

...Though we chisel away as best we can at the mysterious block from which our life is made, the black vein of destiny continually reappears.

There have been in this century only one great man and one great thing: Napoleon and liberty. For want of the great man, let us have the great thing.

In the opera we call love, the libretto is almost nothing.

There are people who observe the rules of honor as one observes the stars, from a great distance.

Take all reasonable advantage of that which the present may offer you. It is the only time which is ours. Yesterday is buried forever, and to-morrow we may never see.

There must be people who pray even for those who never pray.

[T]he small is great, the great is small; all is in equilibrium in necessity.

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

Here we stop. Upon the threshold of wedding nights stands an angel smiling, his finger on his lip.

I only take a half share in the civil war; I am willing to die, I am not willing to kill.