Quotes from Victor Hugo

Police chiefs don't think a cat can possibly turn into a lion; and yet, it happens.

M. Myriel devait subir le sort de tout nouveau venu dans une petite ville où il y a beaucoup de bouches qui parlent et fort peu de têtes qui pensent.

When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age.

This man of lofty virtue had three domiciles in Paris solely for the purpose of evading the police.

composed of all the innocence of the present, and of all the passion of the future.

The faults of women, children and servants,' he said, 'and of the weak, the poor and the ignorant, are the faults of husbands, fathers and masters, and of the strong, the rich and the learned.

Errors make excellent projectiles.

Then she looked at Marius, put on a strange expression and said to him, "Do you know, Monsieur Marius, you're a very pretty boy?

Whatever To-day may be, To-morrow will be peace.

The abyss sometimes has these thoughtful ideas; but you will do well to beware of its kindness.

One can no more prevent the mind from returning to an idea than the sea from returning to a shore. In the case of the sailor, this is called the tide; in the case of the guilty, its is called remorse. God upheaves the soul as well as the ocean.

Factions are blind men who aim correctly.

O viaggio implacabile della società umana! O perdite di uomini e di anime lungo il cammino! Oceano nel quale cade tutto ciò che la legge lascia cadere! Funesto allontanarsi di ogni soccorso! O morte mortale! Il mare è l'inesorabile notte sociale dove la pena getta i suoi dannati. Il mare è l'immensa miseria. L'anima, alla deriva tra quei gorghi, può divenire cadavere. Chi la resusciterà?

Our acts make or mar us, we are the children of our own deeds.

and custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to divine destiny; so long as the three great problems of the century—the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light—are unsolved; so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the world;—in other words

Short as life is, we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time.

A harmony established contrary to sense is often more onerous than a war.

La scarcerazione non è liberazione. Si esce dal bagno penale ma non dalla condanna.

Be off with you, or I'll blow up the barricade!

Quando molte sensazioni hanno agitato la giornata, quando qualcosa preoccupa la mente, ci si addormenta, sì, ma non ci si riaddormenta. Il sonno può venire, ma difficilmente può ritornare.

Nothing oppresses the heart like symmetry.

Men had only touched him to bruise him. Every contact with them had been a blow. Never, since his infancy, since the days of his mother, of his sister, had he ever encountered a friendly word and a kindly glance. From suffering to suffering, he had gradually arrived at the conviction that life is a war; and that in this war he was the conquered. He had no other weapon than his hate. He resolved to whet it in the galleys and to bear it away with him when he departed.

Whatever may be happening today, peace is the meaning of tomorrow

The most ferocious creatures are disarmed by caresses bestowed on their young.