Quotes from Victor Hugo

Let us never fear robbers or murderers. They are dangers from without, petty dangers. Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices are the real murderers. The great dangers lie within ourselves. What matters it if something threatens are head or our purse! Let us think only of that which threatens the soul.

Sometimes he used a spade in his garden, and sometimes he read and wrote. He had but one name for these two kinds of labor; he called them gardening. 'The Spirit is a garden,' said he

God is behind everything, but everything hides God. Things are black, creatures are opaque. To love a being is to render that being transparent.

For there are many great deeds done in the small struggles of life. There is a determined though unseen bravery that defends itself foot by foot in the darkness against the fatal invasions of necessity and dishonesty. Noble and mysterious triumphs that no eye sees and no fame rewards, and no flourish of triumph salutes. Life, misfortunes, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are the battlefields that have their heroes; obscure heroes, sometimes greater than the illustrious heroes.

He found that man needs affection, that life without a warming love is but a dry wheel, creaking and grating as it turns.

There are people who observe the rules of honor as one observes the stars, from a great distance.

Good actions are the invisible hinges on the doors of heaven.

Love partakes of the soul itself. it is of the same nature. like it, it is a divine spark, like it, it is incorruptible, indivisible, imperishable, it is the point of fire which is within us, which is immortal and infinite, which nothing can limit and nothing can extinguish.

The mother...swinging the children by pulling on a length of string, while at the same time she kept and eye on them with that protective watchfulness, half animal, half angelic, which is the quality of motherhood.

She worked in order to live, and presently fell in love, also in order to live, for the heart, too, has its hunger.

When a man understands the art of seeing, he can trace the spirit of an age and the features of a king even in the knocker on a door.

It is man's consolation that the future is to be a sunrise instead of a sunset.

Look not at the face, young girl, look at the heart. The heart of a handsome young man is often deformed. There are hearts in which love does not keep. Young girl, the pine is not beautiful; it is not beautiful like the poplar, but it keeps its foliage in winter.

Cosette was not very timid by nature. There flowed in her veins some of the blood of the bohemian and the adventuress who runs barefoot. It will be remembered that she was more of a lark than a dove. There was a foundation of wildness and bravery in her

Table talk and Lovers' talk equally elude the grasp; Lovers' Talk is clouds, Table Talk is smoke. Les Miserables

where there is no more hope, song remains.

Ma vie est une énigme dont ton nom est le mot. (My life is an enigma, of which your name is the word.)

Curiosity is one of the forms of feminine bravery.

Sire, you are looking at a plain man, and I am looking at a great man. Each of us may benefit.

Every good quality runs into a defect; economy borders on avarice, the generous are not far from the prodigal, the brave man is close to the bully; he who is very pious is slightly sanctimonious; there are just as many vices to virtue as there are holes in the mantle of Diogenes.

To love or to have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life. To love is a consummation.

Joy is the reflex of terror.

Sorrow is a fruit. God does not make it grow on limbs too weak to bear it.

This barricade is made neither of paving stones, nor of timbers, nor of iron; it is made of two mounds, a mound of ideas and a mound of sorrows. Here misery encounters the ideal. Here the day embraces the night, and says: I will die with you and you will be born again with me.