Quotes from Victor Hugo

The greatest favorites of destiny make mistakes. Our joys are composed of shadow. The supreme smile is God's alone.

what is there left to desire beyond it? A little garden in which to walk, and immensity in which to dream. At one's feet that which can be cultivated and plucked; over head that which one can study and meditate upon: some flowers on earth, and all the stars in the sky.

Everybody has noticed the way cats stop and loiter in a half-open door. Hasn't everyone said to a cat: For heaven's sake, why don't you come in? With opportunity half-open in front of them, there are men who have a similar tendency to remain undecided between two solutions, at the risk of being crushed by fate abruptly closing the opportunity. The overprudent, cats as they are, and because they are cats, sometimes run more danger than the bold.

The history of men is reflected in the history of sewers.

The guilty one is not the person who has committed the sin, but the person who has created the shadow.

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather in spite of ourselves.

It was the second white apparition which he had encountered. The Bishop had caused the dawn of virtue to rise on his horizon; Cosette caused the dawn of love to rise.

Il crepuscolo piace solo ai pipistrelli.

They say that it is, nothing, that one does not suffer, that it is an easy end; that death in this why is very much simplified. Ah! then, what do they call they call this agony of six weeks, this summing up in one day? What then is the anguish of this irreparable day, which is passing so slowly and yet so fast? What is this ladder of tortures which terminates in the scaffold?

Abstruse speculations contain vertigo.

A forza d'uscire per recarsi a sognare, viene il giorno in cui si esce per andarsi ad annegare.

Vrhunac sre?e u životu, to je uvjerenje da vas netko voli; voli radi vas samih, bolje re?eno, voli protiv vas samih; slijepac ima to uvjerenje.

For our part, if we were forced to make a choice between the barbarians of civilization and the civilized men of barbarism, we should choose the barbarians.

Las mujeres juegan con su belleza como los niños con un cuchillo, y se hieren.

Adorable ambuscades of providence!

Chantez, riez; soyez heureux, soyes célèbres; Chacun de vous sers bientôt dans les ténèbres. Sing, laugh; be happy, be famous; Each one of you will soon be in the darkness.

I am he who cometh out of the depths. My lords, you are great and rich. There lies your danger. You profit by the night; but beware! The dawn is all-powerful. You cannot prevail over it. It is coming. Nay! it is come. Within it is the day-spring of irresistible light. And who shall hinder that sling from hurling the sun into the sky. The sun I speak of is Right. You are Privilege. Tremble!

He fell to the seat, she by his side. There no more words. The stars were beginning to shine. How was it that their lips met? How is it that the birds sing, the the snow melts, that the rose opens, that May blooms, that the dawn whitens behind the black trees on the shivering summit of the hills?

Moreover, and we must not forget this, interests which are not very friendly to the ideal and the sentimental are in the way. Somestimes the stomach paralyzes the heart.

they no longer had any hope, but they had despair. Despair is a last weapon that sometimes brings victory; Virgil said so.

The most sovereign symptom of love is a tenderness that is, at times, almost unbearable.

A man may beg, but a woman has to sell.

What are the convulsions of a city compared to the emeutes of the soul? Man is a depth still more profound than the people.

In vain we chisel, as best we can, the mysterious block of which our life is made, the black vein of destiny reappears continuously.