Quotes from Victor Hugo

It was SHE. Whoever has loved knows all the radiant meaning contained in the three letters of this word 'she.

I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat was threadbare - there were holes at his elbows; the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul.

The book the reader has now before his eyes - from one end to the other, in its whole and in its details, whatever the omissions, the exceptions, or the faults - is the march from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from the false to the true, from night to day, from appetite to conscience, from rottenness to life, from brutality to duty, from Hell to Heaven, from nothingness to God. Starting point: matter; goal: the soul. Hydra at the beginning, angel at the end.

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

Gavroche had fallen only to rise again; he sat up, a long stream of blood rolled down his face, he raised both arms in air, looked in the direction whence the shot came, and began to sing.

Each of our passions, even love, has a stomach that must not be overloaded. We must in everything write the word 'finis' in time; we must restrain ourselves, when it becomes urgent; we must draw the bolt on the appetite, play a fantasia on the violin, then break the strings with our own hand. The Wise man is he who knows when and how to stop.

Should we continue to look upwards? Is the light we can see in the sky one of those which will presently be extinguished? The ideal is terrifying to behold... brilliant but threatened on all sides by the dark forces that surround it: nevertheless, no more in danger than a star in the jaws of the clouds.

He who contemplates the depths of Paris is seized with vertigo. Nothing is more fantastic. Nothing is more tragic. Nothing is more sublime.

The earth is a great piece of stupidity.

You are adorable, mademoiselle. I study your feet with the microscope and your soul with the telescope.

A doctor's door should never be closed, a priest's door should always be open.

Dost thou understand? I love thee! he cried again. What love! said the unhappy girl with a shudder. He resumed,--The love of a damned soul. a

Whatever causes night in our souls may leave stars. Cimourdain was full of virtues and truth, but they shine out of a dark background.

I was dying when you came.

There comes an hour when protest no longer suffices; after philosophy there must be action; the strong hand finishes what the idea has sketched.

And must I now begin to doubt - who never doubted all these years? My heart is stone, and still it trembles. The world I have known is lost in the shadows. Is he from heaven or from hell? And does he know, that granting me my life today, this man has killed me, even so. - Javert

What matters deafness of the ear, when the mind hears? The one true deafness, the incurable deafness, is that of the mind.

To err is human. To loaf is Parisian.

The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real that we exist, it is by the ideal that we live.

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.

Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over, this is recognised: that the human race has been harshly treated, but that it has advanced.

The straight line, a respectable optical illusion which ruins many a man.

You would have imagined her at one moment a maniac, at another a queen.

Love each other dearly always. There is scarcely anything else in the world but that: to love one another.