Quotes from Victor Hugo

Every one has noticed the taste which cats have for pausing and lounging between the two leaves of a half-shut door. Who is there who has not said to a cat, "Do come in!

It was a garbage heap, and it was Sinai.

Red is an all-embracing colour,' said the bishop. 'How fortunate that those who despise it in a bonnet revere it in a hat.

God gives air to men; the law sells it to them.

He felt as though his brain were on fire. She had come to him, what joy! And then, how she had looked at him! She seemed more beautiful than ever before. Beautiful with a beauty that combined all of the woman with all of the angel, a beauty that would have made Petrarch sing and Dante kneel. He felt as though he were swimming in the deep blue sky. At the same time he was horribly disconcerted, because there was dust on his boots.

He kissed the handkerchief, inhaled its perfume, put it over his heart, against his flesh in the daytime, and at night went to sleep with it on his lips. I feel her whole soul in it! he exclaimed. The handkerchief belonged to the old gentleman, who had simply dropped it from his pocket.

Social problems go beyond borders. The sores of the human race, these running sores that cover the glove, don't stop at red or blue lines drawn on the map. Wherever men are ignorant and desperate, wherever women sell themselves for bread, wherever children suffer for want of instruction or a warm hearth, Les Misérables knocks on the door and says: Open up, I have come for you.

La popularité ne va jamais sans la défaveur. L'amour des esclaves est toujours doublé de la haine des maîtres.

By continually going out for reverie, a day comes when you go out to drown yourself.

The just man frowns, but never sneers. We understand anger, not malice.

There are miraculous relationships between beings and things; in this inexhaustible whole, from sun to aphid, no one looks down on anyone else; everyone needs each other. Light

Dans cette vie importante il y a deux phases principales : avant la chute, après la chute ; et, sous ces deux phases, deux questions : question de l'éducation, question de la pénalité ; et, entre ces deux questions, la société tout entière.

If we ever feel the need to follow something, let it be our own Divine intuition.

Which of the two was the victim of the other?

God raises from the dead he who man slays, he whom his brothers have rejected, finds his father once more. Pray, believe, enter into life the father is there.

The soul of a young girl should not be left in the dark; later on, mirages that are too abrupt and too lively are formed there, as in a dark chamber.

The four walls of the living redoubt had fallen, hardly could a quivering be detected here and there among the corpses; and thus the French legions, grander than the Roman legions, expired at Mont-Saint-Jean on ground soaked in rain and blood, in the somber wheatfields, at the spot where today at four in the morning, whistling, and gaily whipping up his horse, Joseph drives by with the mail from Nivelles.

what can man do in hell, they sang; for song lingers where there is no longer any hope.

To dare; that is the price of progress.

In this age devoted to completing the French Revolution and to beginning the Human Revolution, equality between the sexes being part of equality between men, a great woman was needed. Woman had to prove that she could have all our manly qualities without losing her angelic ones: that she could be strong without ceasing to be gentle: George Sand is that proof. . . . she bequeathes to us the right of woman which draws its proof from woman's genius.. . . Thus the Revolution is fulfilled.

A man's eye reveals his quality. It shows how much of a man there is within us. We declare ourselves by the light that gleams under our eyebrows. Petty spirits merely wink; great spirits emit a flash of lightning.

An enormous fortress of prejudices, privileges, superstitions, lies, exactions, abuses, violences, iniquities, and darkness still stands erect in this world, with its towers of hatred. It must be cast down. This monstrous mass must be made to crumble. To conquer at Austerlitz is grand; to take the Bastille is immense.

Man has upon him his flesh, which is at once his burden and his temptation. He drags it with him and yields to it. He must watch it, cheek it, repress it, and obey it only at the last extremity. There may be some fault even in this obedience; but the fault thus committed is venial; it is a fall, but a fall on the knees which may terminate in prayer.

At the hour of civilization through which we are now passing, and which is still so sombre, the miserable's name is Man; he is agonizing in all climes, and he is groaning in all languages.