Quotes from Victor Hugo

Viajar es nacer y morir a cada instante.

Victory, when it is in accord with progress, merits the applause of the people; but a heroic defeat merits their tender compassion. The one is magnificent, the other sublime. For our own part, we prefer martyrdom to success.

The future belongs to hearts even more than it does to minds.

From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type.

It is sometimes no less startling to meet the dog than the wolf

Toat? f?ptura Cosettei era naivitate, nevinov??ie, transparen??, alb, candoare, str?lucire. S-ar fi putut spune despre Cosette c? e un cer limpede. R?spândea o prospeÈ›ime de aprilie È™i zori de zi. În ochii ei era rou?. Cosette era o întrupare a luminii aurorei în chip de femeie.

en de certains lieux, en de certains heures regarder la mer est un poision.

I waited for the moment when he would resume his task of blood. The position was a strange one: he had already tried to kill me and failed, to prove that he was white; and now he was going to murder me to show that he was black.

CHAPTER II—A DOUBLE QUARTETTE

Tous étant sourds pour lui, il n'avait pas été sourd pour elle

Never was keener anguish lavished upon a thing more charming or more delicate.

Je tends vers la société sans roi, l'humanité sans frontière, la religion sans livre.

Oui, les brutalités du progrès s'appellent révolutions. Quand elles sont finies, on reconnaît ceci : que le genre humain a été rudoyé, mais qu'il a marché. Le

a Breton archer from the guard of Monsieur de Berry.

These Oscars bore the names, one of Felix Tholomyes, of Toulouse; the second, Listolier, of Cahors; the next, Fameuil, of Limoges; the last, Blachevelle, of Montauban. Naturally, each of them had his mistress. Blachevelle loved Favourite, so named because she had been in England; Listolier adored Dahlia, who had taken for her nickname the name of a flower; Fameuil idolized Zephine, an abridgment of Josephine; Tholomyes had Fantine, called the Blonde, because of her beautiful, sunny hair.

Il n'y a dans les religions que cela d'irreductible. Mais cet irreductible suffit. On ne voit pas l'immense être nécessaire; on le sent.

They convert a poor camel-driver into a Mahomet; a peasant girl tending her goats into a Joan of Arc. Solitude generates a certain amount of sublime exaltation.

Il avait appris l'histoire exprès pour s'indigner en connaissance de cause.

Il faut être mangeant ou mangé.

In six months the little girl had become a young woman; that was all. Nothing is more common than this phenomenon. There is a moment when girls bloom in a twinkling, and become roses all at once. Yesterday we left them children, today we find them disturbing. She had not only grown; she had become idealized. As three April days are enough for certain trees to put on a covering of flowers, six months had been enough for her to put on a mantle of beauty. Her April had come.

Your mind is as wide as the sky.

Non poteva sapere a qual segno ribolla e tempesti questo mare delle passioni umane quando gli si nega ogni sbocco; come cresca, come si gonfi, come trabocchi, come scavi il cuore, come scoppi in singhiozzi interiori e in sorde convulsioni, finchè non abbia sfondato le sue dighe e rotto il suo letto.

If there is no sun,one must be made

In the deepest recesses of that ancient Paris of the poor and destitute which lay hidden beneath the brilliance of the rich and fortunate Paris, there was to be heard the sombre growling of the masses: a fearful and awe-inspiring voice in which were mingled the snarl of animals and the words of God, a terror to the faint hearted and a warning to the wise, coming at once from the depths, like the roaring of a lion, and from the heights like the voice of thunder.