Quotes from Victor Hugo

the fate of Europe would have been different. A few drops of water, more or less, decided the downfall of Napoleon. All that Providence required in order to make Waterloo the end of Austerlitz was a little more rain, and a cloud traversing the sky out of season sufficed to make a world crumble. The battle of Waterloo could not be begun until half-past eleven o'clock, and that gave Blücher time to come up. Why? Because the ground was wet.

Everyday he saw better, and he began to climb slowly, one by one, almost reluctantly at first then, with intoxication and, as though drawn by an irresistible fascination, steps that started off dark, then gradually became dimly illuminated, only to end in the luminous and splendid blaze of enthusiasm.

La guerre, c'est la guerre des hommes; la paix c'est la guerre des idées.

Qué había esta vez en la mirada de la joven? Marius no hubiera podido decirlo. No había nada y lo había todo. Fue un relámpago extraño. [...] Es una especie de ternura indecisa que se revela al azar y que espera. Es una trampa que la inocencia arma sin saberlo, donde atrapa a dos corazones sin quererlo.

Far be it from me to insult the pun! I honor it in proportion to its merits; nothing more. All the most august, the most sublime, the most charming of humanity, and perhaps outside of humanity, have made puns.

Let us never fear robbers or murders. Those are dangerous from without, Teddy dangerous. Let us be 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.

He thought her more beautiful than ever, with a beauty that was at once feminine and angelic, that wholeness of beauty that had moved Petrarch to song and brought Dante to his knees.

Humanity is similarity. All men are of the same clay. No difference, here below at least, lies in predestination. The same darkness before, the same flesh during, the same ashes after life. But ignorance, mixed with the human composition, blackens it. This incurable ignorance possesses the heart of man, and there becomes Evil.

There are two stages - living on little, and living on nothing. They are like two rooms, the first dark, the second pitch-black.

THIS IS THE SURPRISE.

I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses.

The counterfeits of the past take assumed names, and are fond of calling themselves the future. That eternally returning spector, the past, not infrequently falsifies its passport.

La sua vita era ancora troppo breve, per sapere che non c'è cosa più imminente dell'impossibile, e che quanto dobbiamo sempre prevedere è l'imprevisto.

one felt the sacred intimacy of the birds and the trees; by day the wings rejoice the leaves, by night the leaves protect the wings.

Infinity is. It is there. If infinity had no self, the self would be its limit; it would not be infinite. In other words, it would not be. But it is. So it has a self. This self of infinity is God.

We live in the midst of a gloomy society. Success; that is the lesson which falls drop by drop from the slope of corruption.

They are les misérables - the outcasts, the underdogs. And who is to blame? Is it not the most fallen who have most need of charity?

owing money was the beginning of slavery ..... a creditor was worse than a boss, for a boss only owns your person but a creditor owns your dignity and can slap it around.

Proper distribution does not imply an equal share but an equitable share. Equity is the essence of equality.

It is on December nights, with the thermometer at zero, that we most think of the sun.

They were moments when she was suddenly reminded of her child, and perhaps also of the man she had loved; the breaking of links with the past is a painful thing.

When all was said, his fate, however ugly it might prove to be, was in his own hands; he was its master.

Melancholy is a twilight. Suffering melts into it in sombre joy.

Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are the fields of battle which have their heroes; obscure heroes, who are, sometimes, grander than the heroes who win renown.