Quotes from Victor Hugo

To understand the nature of the Revolution we must call it progress; and we may define progress by the word tomorrow.

First I loved women, then animals, and now I love stones. They're just as amusing as women and animals and they're much less trecherous.

One kiss, and that was everything.

A saint addicted to abnegation is a dangerous neighbor; he is very likely to infect you with an incurable poverty, a stiffening of the articulations necessary to advancement, and, in fact, more renunciation than you would like; and men flee from this contagious virtue. Hence the isolation of Monseigneur Bienvenu. We live in a sad society. Succeed--that is the advice which falls drop by drop from the overhanging corruption.

The sole social evil is darkness; humanity is identity, for all men are made of the same clay.

Misfortunes shared creates happiness.

Make thought a whirlwind.

in our civilization there are fearful hours - such are those when the criminal law pronounces shipwreck upon a man. What a mournful moment is that in which society withdraws itself and gives up a thinking being forever.

Vous rappelez-vous notre douce vie, Lorsque nous etions si jeunes tous deux, Et que nous n'avions au coeur d'autre envie Que d'etre bien mis et d'etre amoureux, Lorsqu'en ajoutant votre age a mon age, Nous ne comptions pas a deux quarante ans, Et que, dans notre humble et petit menage, Tout, meme l'hiver, nous etait printemps?

Ništa je umreti - strašno je ne živeti.

He felt that to increase his knowledge was to strengthen his hatred. Under certain circumstances, instruction and enlightenment may serve as rallying points for evil.

In principle any revolt strengthens the government it fails to overthrow.

Nature sometimes joins her effects and her appearances to our acts with a sort of serious and intelligent appropriateness; as if she would compel us to reflect.

Is there not in every human soul, was there not in the soul of Jean Valjean in particular, a first spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this world, immortal in the other, which good can develop, fan, ignite, and make to glow with splendor, and which evil can never wholly extinguish?

He was fond of saying, There is a bravery of the priest as well as the bravery of a colonel of dragoons,--only, he added, ours must be tranquil.

A torch-flame resembles the wisdom of cowards: it gives a poor light because it trembles.

At another time, on receiving a notification of the decease of a gentleman of the country-side, wherein not only the dignities of the dead man, but also the feudal and noble qualifications of all his relatives, spread over an entire page: What a stout back Death has! he exclaimed. What a strange burden of titles is cheerfully imposed on him, and how much wit must men have, in order thus to press the tomb into the service of vanity!

A reflection from this heaven shone upon the bishop. But it was also a luminous transparency, for this heaven was within him: this heaven was his conscience.

Communism and agrarian law think that they solve the second problem. They are mistaken. Their division kills production. Equal partition abolishes emulation; and consequently labor. It is a partition made by the butcher, which kills that which it divides. It is therefore impossible to pause over these pretended solutions. Slaying wealth is not the same thing as dividing it. The

Nihilism has no point. There is no such thing as nothingness. Zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing. Man

The moral world has no greater spectacle than this: a troubled and restless conscience on the verge of committing an evil deed, contemplating the sleep of a good man.

Kata-kata keras dan pedas menunjukkan alasan yang lemah.

Be a religion to each other. Each man has his own fashion of adoring God. Saperlotte! the best way to adore God is to love one's wife. I love thee! that's my catechism. He who loves is orthodox.

She worked to live; then, also to live, for the heart too has its hunger, she loved.