Quotes from Victor Hugo

The beautiful is as useful as the useful. He added after a moment's silence, Perhaps more so.

Do you know what friendship is?' he asked. 'Yes,' replied the gypsy; 'it is to be brother and sister; two souls which touch without mingling, two fingers on one hand.' 'And love?' pursued Gringoire. 'Oh! love!' said she, and her voice trembled, and her eye beamed. 'That is to be two and to be but one. A man and a woman mingled into one angel. It is heaven.

For there are many great deeds done in the small struggles of life.

He did not study God; he was dazzled by him.

Have no fear of robbers or murderers. They are external dangers, petty dangers. We should fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices the real murderers. The great dangers are within us. Why worry about what threatens our heads or our purses? Let us think instead of what threatens our souls.

Love is the only future God offers.

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.

Nothing discernible to the eye of the spirit is more brilliant or obscure than man; nothing is more formidable, complex, mysterious, and infinite. There is a prospect greater than the sea, and it is the sky; there is a prospect greater than the sky, and it is the human soul.

Be like the bird that, passing on her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings.

Being good is easy, what is difficult is being just.

The poor man shuddered, overflowed with an angelic joy; he declared in his transport that this would last through life; he said to himself that he really had not suffered enough to deserve such radiant happiness, and he thanked God, in the depths of his soul, for having permitted that he, a miserable man, should be so loved by this innocent being.

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

A one-eyed man is much more incomplete than a blind man, for he knows what it is that's lacking.

Every bird that flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw.

Curiosity is gluttony. To see is to devour.

Faith is necessary to men; woe to him who believes in nothing!

As with stomachs, we should pity minds that do not eat.

Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.

The paradise of the rich is made out of the hell of the poor.

And do you know Monsieur Marius? I believe I was a little in love with you.

mothers are often fondest of the child which has caused them the greatest pain.

He loved books; books are cold but safe friends.

Nothing is more imminent than the impossible . . . what we must always foresee is the unforeseen.

Fashions have done more harm than revolutions.