Quotes from Victor Hugo

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

There are birds in the clouds, just as there are angels above human distresses; but what can they do for him? They sing and fly and float, and he, he rattles in the death agony.

True or false, 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. M.

In the case of sand as in that of woman, there is a fineness which is treacherous.

The child watched its disappearance--he was astounded but dreamy. His stupefaction was complicated by a sense of the dark reality of existence. It seemed as if there were experience in this dawning being. Did he, perchance, already exercise judgment? Experience coming too early constructs, sometimes, in the obscure depths of a child's mind, some dangerous balance--we know not what--in which the poor little soul weighs God. Feeling himself innocent, he yielded. There was no complaint

Let us remark by the way, that to be blind and to be loved, is, in fact, one of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness upon this earth, where nothing is complete.

Neither was to blame for the way they felt, because Marius was someone who embraces sorry and dwells in it, but Cosette felt it deeply but recovered.

Sono questi gli effetti dell'amore, dell'infanzia, della gioventù, della gioia. La novità della terra e della vita c'entra per qualche cosa. Nulla è incantevole come il riflesso colorante della felicità sulla soffitta. Tutti abbiamo nel nostro passato una soffitta azzurra.

Success; that is the lesson which falls drop by drop from the slope of corruption. Be it said in passing, that success is a very hideous thing. Its false resemblance to merit deceives men.

Something new was entering his soul. Jean Valjean had never loved anything... But, as he was fifty-five and Cosette was only eight, all the love he might have felt through his whole life melted into a sort of ineffable glow. This was the second white vision he had met. The bishop had caused the dawn of virtue on his horizon; Cosette had invoked the dawn of love.

He was full of sly caution and clumsy recklessness. He

In thought there always exists a certain amount of internal rebellion;

Let us fight. Let us fight, but let us discriminate. The characteristic of truth is never to be extreme. What need has it to exaggerate? There is that which needs to be destroyed, and there is that which simply needs to be elucidated and examined. Well intentioned and serious examination, that is a force to be reckoned with! Let us not put to the torch where it is enough to bring light.

We only love the fray so long as there is danger, and in any case, the combatants of the first hour have alone the right to be the exterminators of the last. He who has not been a stubborn accuser in prosperity should hold his peace in the face of ruin.

Each time he uttered the word 'Monsieur' in his mild, compassionable voice, the man's face lighted up. The courtesy, to the ex-convict, was like fresh water to a shipwrecked man. Ignominy thirsts for respect.

I do not know whether it will be read by all, but I wrote it for all.

Now, there's a young man who looks like a real pedant, for you!

But you are good-natured princes, and you do not think it a bad thing that belief in the good God should constitute the philosophy of the people, very much as the goose stuffed with chestnuts is the truffled turkey of the poor. CHAPTER

Death belongs only to God. What right have men to lay hands on a thing so unknown?

There is one thing sadder than to see one's children die; it is to see them leading an evil life.

I buoni pensieri hanno i loro abissi al pari dei cattivi.

We are drawn to what we lack. No one loves daylight more than a blind man.

Il paraît que les paroles des hommes forts doivent toujours recevoir de l'approche de la mort une certaine grandeur.

Oh, implacable march of human societies! Oh, losses of men and of souls on the way! Ocean into which falls all that the law lets slip! Disastrous absence of help! Oh, moral death! The sea is the inexorable social night into which the penal laws fling their condemned. The sea is the immensity of wretchedness. The soul, going down stream in this gulf, may become a corpse. Who shall resuscitate it?