Quotes from Victor Hugo

Shall we weep for all the innocent, all martyrs, all children, the lowly as well as the exalted? I agree to that. But in that case, as I have told you, we must go back further than '93, and our tears must begin before Louis XVII. I will weep with you over the children of kings, provided that you will weep with me over the children of the people.

La vie n'est qu'une longue perte de tout ce qu'on aime.

that which is said of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all in their destinies, as that which they do.

the winter always bears away with it a portion of our sadness;

Children have their morning song as well as birds.

The utmost extremity of degradation is the obscene merriment to which it gives rise.

encompassed

For the masses, success has almost the same profile as supremacy.

He set out for Toulon. He arrived there, after a journey of twenty-seven days, on a cart, with a chain on his neck. At Toulon he was clothed in the red cassock. All that had constituted his life, even to his name, was effaced; he was no longer even Jean Valjean; he was number 24,601.

In spring, sad souls grow light, as light falls into cellars at midday.

The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only. The rest is only the rest, and comes afterward. Nothing is more real than those great shocks which two souls give each other in exchanging this spark.

To subdue matter is the first step; to realize the ideal is the second.

The slashers have finished; it was the turn of the thinkers. The century that Waterloo was intended to arrest has pursued its march. That sinister victory was vanquished by liberty.

There is a spectacle more grand than the sea; it is heaven: there is a spectacle more grand than heaven; it is the inmost recesses of the soul.

He was at that period of life when the mind of men who think is composed, in nearly equal parts, of depth and ingenuousness. A grave situation being given, he had all that is required to be stupid: one more turn of the key, and he might be sublime.

Vrai ou faux, ce qu'on dit des hommes tient souvent autant de place dans leur vie et surtout dans leur destinée que ce qu'ils font.

The peasants of Asturias are convinced that in every litter of wolves there is one dog, which is killed by the mother because, otherwise, as he grew up, he would devour the other little ones. Give to this dog-son of a wolf a human face, and the result will be Javert.

When one is at the end of one's life, to die means to go away; when one is at the beginning of it, to go away means to die.

What an ominous minute is that in which society draws back and consummates the irreparable abandonment of a sentient being!

when I see humanity ripped apart and events patched up, and so many spots on the sun and so many holes in the moon, when I see so much misery everywhere, I suspect that God is not rich. The appearance exists, it is true, but I feel that he is hard up.

Quoi que je fasse, elle est toujours là, cette pensée infernale, comme un spectre de plomb à mes côtés, seule et jalouse, chassant toute distraction, face à face avec moi misérable, et me secouant de ses deux mains de glace quand je veux détourner la tête ou fermer les yeux.

Flat ubi vult

The first symptom of true love in man is timidity, in a girl it is boldness.

There is not a metaphor, not an analogy, in slang, which does not contain a lesson.