Victor Hugo Quotes
Let us leave to the brain what belongs to it, and agree that the work of the men of genius is of the superhuman, the offspring of man.
The earlier works of a man of genius are always preferred to the newer ones, in order to prove that he is going down instead of up.
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.
Is it not a thing divine to have a smile which, none know how, has the power to lighten the weight of that enormous chain which all the living in common drag behind them?
It is an unpleasant thing to go to bed without supper, it is a still less pleasant thing not to sup and not to know where one is to sleep.
You are adorable, mademoiselle. I study your feet with the microscope and your soul with the telescope.
...It all seemed to him to have disappeared as if behind a curtain at a theater. There are such curtains that drop in life. God is moving on to the next act.
His whole life was now summed up in two words: absolute uncertainty within an impenetrable fog.
We are not loved by our friends for what we are; rather, we are loved in spite of what we are.
Lastly, this threefold poetry flows from three great sources - The Bible, Homer, Shakespeare.... The Bible before the Iliad, the Iliad before Shakespeare.
Sometimes he used a spade in his garden, and sometimes he read and wrote. He had but one name for these two kinds of labor; he called them gardening. ‘The Spirit is a garden,’ said he
That is the explanation of war, an outrage by humanity upon humanity in despite of humanity.
Let us say it now: to be blind and to be loved, is indeed, upon this earth where nothing is complete, one of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness.
There is suffering in the light; in excess it burns. Flame is hostile to the wing. To burn and yet to fly, this is the miracle of genius.
Civilization survives on the constant discovery of amity and an equal supply of damnation.
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.
There is a material advancement; we desire it. There is, also, a moral grandeur; we hold fast to it.
All who suffer are full of hatred; all who live drag a remorse: the dead alone have broken their chains.
When I speak to you about myself, I am speaking to you about yourself. How is it you don't see that?
Thought is the work of the intellect, reverie is its self-indulgence. To substitute day-dreaming for thought is to confuse a poison with a source of nourishment.
The author creates a book and the people accept or not accept it. The creator of a book is an author and the creator of it's fate are people.
Without at all invalidating what we have just said, we believe that a perpetual remembrance of the tomb is proper for the living. On this point, the priest and the philosopher agree: We must die.
It is often necessary to know how to obey a woman in order sometimes to have the right to command her.
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.
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.
But secondly you say 'society must exact vengeance, and society must punish'. Wrong on both counts. Vengeance comes from the individual and punishment from God.
