Quotes About Victor Hugo

The two friends set out towards Eve's Apple. It is unnecessary to mention that they had first gathered up the money, and that the archdeacon followed them.

It is a novel constructed like a poem, where each character is only exceptional because if the hyperbolic manner in which he represents generality.

Because things are unpleasant, said Jean Valjean, that is no reason for being unjust toward God.

It will be perceived that he had a peculiar manner of his own of judging things: I suspect that he obtained it from the Gospel.

It is the habit of the envious man to absolve himself of public wrongs with his own personal grievances.

What took place next in the fate of M. Myriel?

His ideas assumed a kind of stupefied and mechanical quality which is peculiar to despair.

What was it but a figure of darkness whose sole care had been to safeguard the rising of a star. And that was Jean Valjean's secret.

In this nineteenth century, the religious idea is undergoing a crisis. People are unlearning certain things, and they do well, provided that, while unlearning them they learn this: There is no vacuum in the human heart. Certain demolitions take place, and it is well that they do, but on condition that they are followed by reconstructions.

There was a coffin containing a body in the Petit-Picpus, and a coffin without a body in the Vaugirard cemetery, public order had no doubt been deeply disturbed thereby, but no one was aware of it.

The lancer put on the satisfied smirk of a bandit praised for his honesty.

and the old member of the Convention inspired him, without his being clearly conscious of the fact himself, with that sentiment which borders on hate, and which is so well expressed by the word estrangement.

So it's the silver you're worrying about.' said the bishop. 'I can't tell you where that is.

uttering that terrific cry:

Once, however, he had a pleasure. He had gone out with a Robert Estienne, which he had sold for thirty-five sous under the Quai Malaquais, and he returned with an Aldus which he had bought for forty sous in the Rue des Gres.—'I owe five sous,' he said, beaming on Mother Plutarque. That day he had no dinner.

The Republic in the sovereignty of civil right restored to the masses, the Empire in the sovereignty of the French idea imposed on Europe; he beheld the grand figure of the people emerge from the Revolution, and the grand figure of France spring forth from the Empire.

In its printed form, thought is more imperishable than ever; it is volatile, irresistible, indestructible.

Maître Corbeau, sur un dossier perché, Tenait dans son bec une saisie executoire; Maître Renard, par l'odeur alléché, Lui fit à peu près cette histoire: Hé! bonjour! etc.

Never was keener anguish lavished upon a thing more charming or more delicate.

These Oscars bore the names, one of Felix Tholomyes, of Toulouse; the second, Listolier, of Cahors; the next, Fameuil, of Limoges; the last, Blachevelle, of Montauban. Naturally, each of them had his mistress. Blachevelle loved Favourite, so named because she had been in England; Listolier adored Dahlia, who had taken for her nickname the name of a flower; Fameuil idolized Zephine, an abridgment of Josephine; Tholomyes had Fantine, called the Blonde, because of her beautiful, sunny hair.

His advocacy and understanding of Victor Hugo led to a close friendship,

The ideal and the beautiful are identical; the ideal corresponds to the idea, and beauty to form; hence idea and substance are cognate.

As a means of contrast with the sublime, the grotesque is, in our view, the richest source that nature can offer.

There have been in this century only one great man and one great thing: Napoleon and liberty. For want of the great man, let us have the great thing.