Quotes from Victor Hugo

And you will keep me safe and you will keep me close and rain will make the flowers grow.

Memories are our strength. When night attempts to return, we must light up the great dates, as we would light torches.

Wonderful nature has a double meaning, which dazzles great minds and blinds uncultivated souls. When man is ignorant, when the desert is filled with visions, the darkness of solitude is added to the darkness of intelligence; hence, in man, the possibilities of perdition

Great perils share this beauty, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers.

À ceux qui ignorent, enseignez-leur [...] Le coupable n'est pas celui qui y fait le péché, mais celui qui y a fait l'ombre.

Up to that time, the Republic, the Empire, had been to him only monstrous words. The Republic, a guillotine in the twilight; the Empire, a sword in the night. He had just taken a look at it, and where he had expected to find only a chaos of shadows, he had beheld, with a sort of unprecedented surprise, mingled with fear and joy, stars sparkling...

When I speak to you about myself, I'm speaking to you about yourself. How is it that you don't see that?

In that pallid and sullen shadow in which he crawled, whenever he turned his head and endeavoured to raise his eyes, he saw, with mingled rage and terror, forming, massing, and mounting up out of sight above him with horrid escarpments, a kind of frightful accumulation of things, of laws, of prejudices, of men, and of acts, the outlines of which escaped him, the weight of which appalled him, and which was no other than that prodigious pyramid that we call civilization.

My fellow, you strike me at present as being situated in the moon, kingdom of dream, province of illusion, capital: Soap-Bubble.

Jehan, Jehan! All this will have a bad end. It'll have had a good beginning.

great events have incalculable results.

Ah, Monsieur Priest, you love not the crudities of the true. Christ loved them. He seized a rod and cleared out the Temple. His scourge, full of lightnings, was a harsh speaker of truths. When he cried, 'Sinite parvulos,' he made no distinction between the little children. It would not have embarrassed him to bring together the Dauphin of Barabbas and the Dauphin of Herod. Innocence, Monsieur, is its own crown. Innocence has no need to be a highness. It is as august in rags as in fleurs de lys.

Bestow on an individual the useless and deprive him of the necessary, and you have the gamin.

The unforeseen, that strange, haughty power which plays with man, had seized Gauvain and held him fast.

It is immoral that a mattress should have so much power. Triumph of that which yields over that which strikes with lightning. But never mind, glory to the mattress which annuls a cannon!

Dissimulation is an act of violence against yourself. A man hates those to whom he lies.

Let us never fear robbers not 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 is what threatens our heads or our purse! Let us think only of that which threatens our soul.

No era la facultad de amar lo que le faltaba, sino la posibilidad.

En esos momentos de la existencia en que el hombre tiene necesidad de orgullo porque tiene necesidad de amor.

Terminar este duelo, amalgamar la idea pura con la realidad humana, hacer penetrar pacíficamente el derecho en el hecho y e hecho en el derecho, es el trabajo de los sabios.

Vénérons le chien. Le chien (quel drôle de bête!), a sa sueur sur sa langue et son sourire dans sa queue.

It may indeed be said that the word is never a more splendid mystery than when it travels in a man's mind from thought to conscience and back again to thought.

The right, indeed, is indestructible. Warsaw can no more be Tartar than Venice can be Teutonic. Kings waste their energies in that contention, and lose their honour. Sooner or later the submerged nation rises again to the surface; Greece is still Greece and Italy, Italy... The theft of a people can never be justified. These august swindles have no future. A nation cannot be shaped as though it were a pocket handkerchief.

El exceso del dolor como el exceso de la alegría, es una cosa violenta que dura poco: el corazón del hombre no puede durar mucho en un extremo.