Quotes from Victor Hugo

Djali trotted along behind them, so overjoyed at seeing Gringoire again that she constantly made him stumble by affectionately putting her horns between his legs. 'That's life,' said the philosopher, each time he narrowly escaped falling flat on his face. 'It's often our best friends who cause our downfall.

One day of happiness is worth more than a lifetime of sorrow .... Under ordinary circumstances, jealousy is a suspicion to the person who excites it and degrading to the person who indulges it.

Desgraciado quien no haya amado mas que cuerpos, formas y apariencias. La muerte le arrebatara todo. Procurad amar las almas y un dia las volvereis a encontrar.

Well, listen a moment, Monsieur Mayor; I have often been severe in my life towards others. It was just. I did right. Now if I were not severe towards myself, all I have justly done would become injustice. Should I spare myself more than others? No. What! if I should be prompt only to punish others and not myself, I should be a wretched indeed! - Javert to M. Madeleine

Of a disposition at once unsociable and talkative, desiring to see no one, yet wishing to converse with some one, he got out of the difficulty by talking to himself.

To speak out aloud when alone is as it were to have a dialogue with the divinity which is within.

How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said.

I repeat, whether we be Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns us all.

Javert, though hideous, was not ignoble.

Virtue has a veil, vice a mask.

That evening, before he went to bed, he said again: Let us never fear robbers nor murderers. Those are dangers from without, petty dangers. Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices are the real murderers. The great dangers lie within ourselves. What matters it what threatens our head or our purse! Let us think only of that which threatens our soul.

I didn't believe it could be so monstrous. It's wrong to be so absorbed in divine law as not to perceive human law. Death belongs to God alone. By what right do men tough that unknown thing?

M. Myriel had to undergo the fate of every newcomer in a little town, where there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think.

Sometimes he dug in his garden; again, he read or wrote. He had but one word for both these kinds of toil; he called them gardening. The mind is a garden, said he.

And so, being in Heaven, it was easy for him to lose sight of earth.

Great grief is a divine and terrible radiance which transfigures the wretched.

Voyager, c'est naître et mourir à chaque instant.

Hatred becomes, within a given time, the hatred of society, then the hatred of the human race, then the hatred of creation.

At his feet something to cultivate and gather; above his head something to study and meditate on; a few flowers on earth and all the stars in heaven.

Let us be like a bird for a moment perched On a frail branch when he sings; Though he feels it bend, yet he sings his song, Knowing that he has wings.

The barber in his shop, warmed by a good stove, was shaving a customer and casting from time to time a look towards this enemy, this frozen and brazen gamin, who had both hands in his pockets, but his wits evidently out of their sheath.

For the rest, he was the same to all men, the fashionable world and the ordinary people. He judged nothing in haste, or without taking account of the cirumstances. He said, 'Let me see how the fault arose.

Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing.

Oh, to lie side by side in the same tomb, hand in hand, and to gently touch a finger-tip from time to time in the darkness, would suffice for my eternity. You who suffer because you love, love more than ever. To die for love is to live by it.