Quotes from Victor Hugo

Breaking the gloomy bonds of the past is a mournful task.

Nada mais via que uma imensa dificuldade de ser.

Souls which have fallen to the bottom of all possible misfortune, unhappy men lost in the lowest of those limbos at which no one any longer looks, the reproved of the law, feel the whole weight of this human society, so formidable for him who is without, so frightful for him who is beneath, resting upon their heads.

It is because revolution cannot be really conquered, and that being providential and absolutely fatal, it is always cropping up afresh

Et quoi qu'il fit, il retombait toujours sur ce poignant dilemme qui était au fond de sa rêverie : - rester dans le paradis et y devenir démon ! rentrer dans l'enfer et y devenir ange !

Niente è più forte di un'idea il cui tempo sia venuto.

A guerra civil? O que há a dizer? Mas haverá uma guerra estrangeira? Toda a guerra entre homens, não é a guerra entre irmãos? (...) Pois bem, a monarquia é o estrangeiro; a opressão é o estrangeiro; o direito divino é o estrangeiro. O despotismo violenta a fronteira moral, como a invasão violenta a fronteira geográfica.

The stem, when the hand is stretched out to pluck the flower, quivers, and seems at once to shrink back, and present itself. The human body has something of this trepidation at the moment when the mysterious fingers of death are about to gather the soul.

Como se vê, tal como acontece com os recém-chegados a uma religião, a sua conversão embriagava-o, precipitava-se na adesão e ia demasiado longe.

An undercurrent of war was rumbling within her.

La sofferenza sociale incomincia a qualunque età.

Desconfiemos. El pasado tiene un rostro : la superstición, y una máscara : la hipocresía. Denunciemos el rostro y arranquemos la máscara.

O nosso coração é tão vacilante e a vida humana um tal mistério, que mesmo num assassinato cívico, num assassinato libertador, se os há, o remorso de ter ferido um homem excede o prazer de ter sido útil ao género humano.

Um dos livreiros para quem trabalhava, Magimel, creio eu, oferecera-lhe levá-lo para sua casa, fornecer-lhe um trabalho regular e dar-lhe 1500 francos por ano. Ter boa casa e 1500 francos, que boa coisa! Mas renunciar à sua liberdade, ser uma espécie de mercenário, uma espécie de literato-caixeiro. Segundo o modo de ver de Mário, (...) ganhava em comodidades e perdia em dignidade

This is at the beginning of my book: When a man is out of sight, it is not too long before he is out of mind. Victor Hugo

Moreover, the Cardinal de Bourbon was a handsome man,—he wore a fine scarlet robe, which he carried off very well,—that is to say, he had all the women on his side, and, consequently, the best half of the audience. Assuredly, it would be injustice and bad taste to hoot a cardinal for having come late to the spectacle, when he is a handsome man, and when he wears his scarlet robe well.

Szubienica to waga, która u jednego koÅ"ca ma czÅ'owieka, a u drugiego caÅ'Ä… ziemiÄ™. By? czÅ'owiekiem - piÄ™kna to rzecz.

after depositing in her heart one of the two germs which are destined, later on, to fill the whole life of woman, coquetry. Love is the other.

This clarity, history, is unforgiving. What is strange about it is that, though it brings light, and precisely because it brings light, it often casts a shadow in the places where brightness used to be seen

You can't stop an idea whose time has come.

We have only to look at some men to distrust them, for we feel the darkness of their souls in two ways. They are restless as to what is behind them, and threatening as to what is before them. They are full of mystery. We can no more answer for what they have done, than for what they will do. The shadow in their looks denounces them. If we hear them utter a word, or see them make a gesture, we catch glimpses of guilty secrets in their past, and dark mysteries in their future.

On emerging from that black and deformed thing which is called the galleys, the Bishop had hurt his soul, as too vivid a light would have hurt his eyes on emerging from the dark. The future life, the possible life which offered itself to him henceforth, all pure and radiant, filled him with tremors and anxiety.

He felt what the earth may possibly feel, at the moment when it is torn open with the iron, in order that grain may be deposited within it; it feels only the wound; the quiver of the germ and the joy of the fruit only arrive later.

La sonrisa de la mujer amada tiene una claridad que disipa las tinieblas.