Quotes from Victor Hugo

In moments like these, offering up his heart at the hour that night flowers offer up their perfume, lit up like a lamp in the middle of the starry night, full of ecstasy in the middle of the universal radiance of creation, he could not perhaps have said himself what was happening in his spirit; he felt something soar up out of him and something fly down into him. Mysterious exchanges between the bottomless well of the soul and the bottomless well of the universe!

A vacancy in the heart does not accomodate itself to a stop-gap.

The ideal is nothing but the culminating point of logic, the same as the beautiful is nothing but the summit of the true. Artistic peoples are also consistent peoples. To love beauty is to see the light.

Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved

As he wished always to appear in mourning, he clothed himself with the night.

It is a shame that I am ignorant, otherwise I would quote to you a mass of things; but I know nothing.

Ä°nsan içinde bulunduÄŸu umutsuz koÅŸullarda bazen bir zinciri bir saç teliyle koparabileceÄŸini san?r. (s. 55)

The prosperity of right is that it is always beautiful and pure.

In proportion as architecture degenerated, printing throve and flourished. The capital of forces which human thought had expended in building, it henceforth expended in books.

Was there a voice that whispered in his ear that he had just passed the most solemn moment of his destiny, that there was no longer a middle course for him; that from now on, he would either be the best of men or he would be the worst of men; that he now had to rise higher, so to speak, than the bishop or fall even lower than the galley slave; that if he wanted to be good, he had to be an angel; that if he wanted to stay bad, he had to be a monster from hell?

We may be indifferent to the death penalty and not declare ourselves either way so long as we have not seen a guillotine with our own eyes. But when we do, the shock is violent, and we are compelled to choose sides, for or against... Death belongs to God alone.

He now clearly perceived the truth which was henceforth to be the centre of his life, namely, that while she was there, while he had her near him, he would need nothing except for her sake and fear nothing except on her account. He was not even conscious of feeling extremely cold, having taken off his coat to cover her.

If we are to believe certain oracles of crafty political views, a little revolt is desirable from the point of view of power. System: revolt strengthens those governments which it does not overthrow.

This is not my house; it is the house of Jesus Christ. This door does not demand of him who enters whether he has a name, but whether he has a grief. You suffer, you are hungry and thirsty; you are welcome. And do not thank me; do not say that I receive you in my house. No one is at home here, except the man who needs a refuge. I say to you, who are passing by, that you are much more at home here than I am myself.

Maintenant je suis captif. Mon corps est aux fers dans un cachot, mon esprit est en prison dans une idee. Une horrible, une sanglante, une implacable idee! Je n'ai plus qu'une pense, qu'une conviction, qu'une certitude: condamne a mort!

Let us show that, if the people abandon the republicans, the republicans do not abandon the people.

Counterfeits of the past, under new names, may easily be mistaken for the future. The past, that ghostly traveler, is liable to forge his papers. We must be wary of the trap. The past has a face which is superstition, and a mask, which is hypocrisy. We must expose the face and tear off the mask.

There is no one for spying on people's actions like those who are not concerned in them

Often a battle is lost and progress is conquered. There is less glory and more liberty. The drum holds its peace; reason takes the word. It is a game in which he who loses wins.

Geometry is deceptive; the hurricane alone is trustworthy.

He opposed the hardness acquired during the last twenty years of his life. This state of mind fatigued him. He perceived with dismay that the sort of frightful calm which the injustice of his misfortune had conferred upon him was giving way within them.

When those we love are in question, our prudence invents every sort of madness.

She went back down to the garden, feeling like a queen, hearing the birds sing—this was in winter—seeing the sky all golden, the sun in the trees, flowers among the shrubs, bewildered, wild, giddy with inexpressible rapture.

Die Wissenschaft muss mit glatten Wangen begonnen werden und nicht erst mit runzeligen, wenn man in ihr etwas erreichen will.