Quotes from Victor Hugo

To learn to read is to light a fire;

When they saw him making money, they said, He is a man of business. When they saw him scattering his money about, they said, He is an ambitious man. When he was seen to decline honors, they said, He is an adventurer. When they saw him repulse society, they said, He is a brute.

A cloud has been collecting for 1500 years, yet you are condemning the thunderclap. Its wrath will be absolved by the future. Its result is a better world; and a caress for the human race issues from its most terrible blows. The human race has been chastised, but it has moved onward.

Suddenly she let fly with this: It's nice here! It was a ghastly dump, but she felt free.

No man was created good by God, nor can be made entirely bad by man.

On ne se connaît pas tant qu'on n'a pas bu ensemble.

It seems to me that I am shooting a flower.

There is still a certain grace in a dead festival. It has been happy.

In these creations, life and symbolic value are not in contradiction: they intensify each other.

Monseigneur Bienvenu was simply a man who took note of the exterior of mysterious questions without scrutinizing them, and without troubling his own mind with them, and who cherished in his own soul a grave respect for darkness.

The Unknown is an ocean. What is conscience? It is the compass of the Unknown. Thought

Perseverance, secret of all triumphs.

The mind is a garden

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction of being loved for yourself, or, more correctly speaking, loved in spite of yourself. To be served is to be caressed.

To love, or to have loved,—this suffices. Demand nothing more. There is no other pearl to be found in the shadowy folds of life. To love is a fulfilment

Des marchands de sang humain criaient a tue-tête : Qui veut des places ?. Une rage m'a pris contre ce peuple. J'ai eu envie de leur crier : Qui veut la mienne ?

Good! And what if you should happen to cough or to sneeze? A man who is making his escape does not cough or sneeze.

At the approach of a certain dark hour, the light of Heaven fills those who are quitting the light of Earth.

Better than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.

This cavern is below all, and the enemy of all; it is hatred, without exception.

Do you permit it? Enjolras

A room where one merely goes to bed costs twenty sous but a room where one retires may cost twenty francs.

Style is the form of the ideal; rhythm is its movement.

I see a dark light.