Quotes from Victor Hugo

The French Revolution, which is nothing else than the idea armed with the sword, rose erect, and, with the same abrupt movement, closed the door of ill and opened the door of good.

The goodness of the mother is written in the gaiety of the child.

Kada si u najvecim mukama i kada ti se dusa grci od bola,kada se ne zna da li si ziv ili mrtav,ipak se tada za one koje volis uvek nadje neznosti u izobilju.Po tome se poznaju velike duse.Kad sve iscezne ostaje samo ljubav.

War has frightful beauties which we have not concealed; it has also, we acknowledge, some hideous features. One of the most surprising is the prompt stripping of the bodies of the dead after the victory. The dawn which follows a battle always rises on naked corpses.

It is a mournful task to break the sombre attachments of the past.

Where are your free and compulsory schools? Does every one know how to read in the land of Dante and of Michael Angelo? Have you made public schools of your barracks? Have you not, like ourselves, an opulent war-budget and a paltry budget of education?

Blind is he who will not see!

The head which does not turn backwards towards horizons that have vanished contains neither thought nor love.

S'il avait eu le Pérou dans sa poche, certainement il l'eût donné à la danseuse ; mais Gringoire n'avait pas le Pérou, et d'ailleurs l'Amérique n'était pas encore découverte.

To realize one's dream. To whom is this accorded? There must be elections for this in heaven; we are all candidates, unknown to ourselves; the angels vote.

We are unjust towards these great men who attempt the future, when they fail.

Their own destiny is a far-off thing to them ... One declines, descends, trickles away, even crumbles away, and yet is hardly conscious of it one's self. It always ends, it is true, in an awakening, but the awakening is tardy. In the meantime, it seems as though we held ourselves neutral in the game which is going on between our happiness and our unhappiness. We are the stake, and we look on at the game with indifference.

A hundred francs, thought Fantine. But in what trade can one earn a hundred sous a day? Come! said she, let us sell what is left. The unfortunate girl became a woman of the town.

to be hated! to love with all the fury of one's soul; to feel that one would give for the least of her smiles, one's blood, one's vitals, one's fame, one's salvation, one's immortality and eternity

The past surged up before him facing the present; he compared them and sobbed. The silence of tears once opened, the despairing man writhed. He felt that he had been stopped short.

There exist there immense numbers of unknown beings, among whom swarm types of the strangest, from the porter of la Rapée to the knacker of Montfaucon. Fex urbis, exclaims Cicero; mob, adds Burke, indignantly; rabble, multitude, populace. These are words and quickly uttered. But so be it. What does it matter? What is it to me if they do go barefoot!

Errors make excellent projectiles. They strike it cleverly in its vulnerable spot, in default of a cuirass, in its lack of logic;

What is this history of Fantine? It is society purchasing a slave. From whom? From misery. From hunger, cold, isolation, destitution. A dolorous bargain. A soul for a morsel of bread. Misery offers; society accepts.

The sacred law of Jesus Christ governs our civilization, but it does not, as yet, permeate it; it is said that slavery has disappeared from European civilization. This is a mistake. It still exists; but it weighs only upon the woman, and it is called prostitution.

This humble soul loved, and that was all.

When those who found this skeleton attempted to disengage it from that which it held in its grasp, it crumbled to dust.

He had given Cosette a dress of Binche lace that had come down to him from his own grandmother. "These fashions have come round again," he said, "old things are all the rage, and the young women of my old age dress like the old women of my childhood

With Cosette's garter, Homer would make the Iliad. He would put into his poem an old babbler like me, and he would call him Nestor.

I don't want your money, said she.