Quotes from Victor Hugo

Ever since history has been written, ever since philosophy has meditated, misery has been the garment of the human race.

When we reach out to pluck a flower the stem trembles, seeming both to shrink and to offer itself. The human body has something of this tremor at the moment when the mysterious hand of death reaches out to pluck a soul.

Seated on a paving-stone near Enjolras, Courfeyrac continued to jeer at the cannon, and every passage of that sinister cloud of projectiles that is called grapeshot, accompanied by its monstrous din, drew from him an ironical comment. 'You're wearing yourself out, you poor old brute. You're getting hoarse. You're not thundering, only spluttering. It's breaking my heart.' His remarks were greeted with laughter.

Ingrates! says the garment, I protected you in inclement weather. Why will you have nothing to do with me? I have just come from the deep sea, says the fish. I have been a rose, says the perfume. I have loved you, says the corpse. I have civilized you, says the convent. To this there is but one reply: In former days.

Whoever you may be, if your name is Prejudice, Abuse, Ignorance, Oppression, Iniquity, Despotism, Injustice, Fanaticism, Tyranny, beware of the gaping gamin. The little fellow will grow up.

It combined corrupt simplicity with delicate ferocity, a curious variety of civilization; a tiger with a simper.

Le propre de l'amour, c'est d'errer.

Misery offers; society accepts

Intellectual and moral growth is no less indispensable than material improvement. To know is a sacrament, to think is the prime necessity, truth is nourishment as well as grain. A reason which fasts from science and wisdom grows thin.

Produce una inmensa tristeza pensar que la naturaleza habla mientras el género humano no escucha.

Svarbiausia, neišsigimk ? žmog?.

The universe appeared to him like an immense malady; everywhere he felt fever, everywhere he heard the sound of suffering, and, without seeking to solve the enigma, he strove to dress the wound.

He thought incessantly, for he could not do otherwise; but he no longer took pleasure in his thoughts. To everything that they proposed to him in a whisper, he replied in his darkness: What is the use?

But let those who do not desire a future reflect on this matter. When they say no to progress, it is not the future but themselves that they are condemning. They are giving themselves a sad malady; they are inoculating themselves with the past. There is but one way of rejecting To-morrow, and that is to die.

With grand and lofty natures, the revolts of the flesh and the senses when subjected to physical suffering cause the soul to spring forth, and make it appear on the brow, just as rebellions among the soldiery force the captain to show himself.

The attempt has been made, and wrongly, to make a class of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie is simply the contented portion of the people. The bourgeois is the man who now has time to sit down. A chair is not a caste.

He plainly perceived this truth, the basis of his life henceforth, that so long as she should be alive, so long as he should have her with him, he should need nothing except for her, and fear nothing save on her account.

On coming out of the chapel, a well can be seen on the left. There are two in this yard. You ask, Why is there no bucket and no pulley to this one? Because no water is drawn from it now. Why is no more water drawn from it? Because it is full of skeletons.

Win a lottery-prize and you are a cleaver man. Winners are adulated. To be born with a caul is everything; luck is what matters. Be fortunate and you will be thought great.

Hours of ecstasy are never more than a moment

As the place is worth seeing, nobody goes there.

Nothing is more real than those great seismic shocks that two souls give each other in exchanging that spark.

exquisite--such was Fantine; and beneath these feminine adornments and these ribbons one could divine a statue, and in that statue a soul.

Le suprême bonheur dans la vie,c'est la conviction qu'on est aimé..