Quotes from Victor Hugo

To this celestial kindness he opposed pride, which is the fortress of evil within us.

La tempestad es un pulmón que agrega sin cesar lúgubres agravaciones a lo que ya no tiene matiz, a lo negro.

The night was serene. Not a cloud was in the zenith. What mattered is that the earth was red, the moon retained her whiteness. Such is the indifference of heaven.

The wretchedness of a child interests a mother, the wretchedness of a young man interests a young girl, the wretchedness of an old man interests no one. It is, of all distresses, the coldest.

We must be brief.

He was no longer Jean Valjean, but No. 24601.

The book which the reader has under his eye at this moment is, from one end to the other, as a whole and in detail, whatever may be its intermittences, exceptions and faults, the march from evil to good, from the unjust to the just, from night to day, from appetite to conscience, from rottenness to life, from hell to heaven, from nothingness to God. Point of departure: matter; point of arrival: the soul. The hydra at the beginning, the angel at the end." Volume V, Book I, Chapter XX This

One would have called it a luminous wound.

Here we pause. On the threshold of wedding nights stands a smiling angel with his finger on his lips. The soul enters into contemplation before that sanctuary where the celebration of love takes place.

plunged into chance,--that is to say, swallowed up in Providence

Bewigged tragedy has a reason for its existence.

I dedicate this book to the rock of hospitality and liberty, to that portion of old Norman ground inhabited by the noble nation of the sea, to the island of Guernsey, severe yet kind, my present asylum, my probable tomb.

Never, even among animals, does the creature born to be a dove change into an osprey. That is only to be seen among men.

Les galères ! Ah ! oui, plutôt mille fois la mort, plutôt l'échafaud que le bagne, plutôt le néant que l'enfer ; plutôt livrer mon cou au couteau de Guillotin qu'au carcan de la chiourme ! Les galères, juste ciel !

I am thirsty. Mortals, I am dreaming: that the turn of Heidelberg has an attack of apoplecy, and that I am one of the dozen leeches which will be applied to it. I want a drink.

Let us have compassion on the chastised. Alas! Who are we ourselves? Who am I who now address you? Who are you who are listening to me? And are you very sure that we have done nothing before we were born? The earth is not devoid of resemblance to a jail. Who knows whether man is not a recaptured offender against divine justice? Look closely at life. It is so made, that everywhere we feel the sense of punishment.

Civil war—what does that mean? Is there a foreign war? Is not all war between men, war between brothers?

It is a novel constructed like a poem, where each character is only exceptional because if the hyperbolic manner in which he represents generality.

This is a leviathan I am about to ship out to sea...

The visit took place. It was a formidable campaign; a nocturnal battle against pestilence and suffocation.

all that he might have felt of love in his entire life melted into a sort of ineffable radiance.

Because things are unpleasant, said Jean Valjean, that is no reason for being unjust toward God.

La vie, le malheur, l'isolement, l'abandon, la pauvreté, sont des champs de bataille qui ont leurs héros ; héros obscurs plus grands parfois que les héros illustres.

It will be perceived that he had a peculiar manner of his own of judging things: I suspect that he obtained it from the Gospel.