Quotes by Victor Hugo

These two beings, who had loved each other so exclusively, and with so touching a love, and who had lived so long for each other, were now suffering beside one another and through one another; without speaking of it, without harsh feeling, and smiling all the while.

That I may carry on what I have begun, that I may do good, that I may be one day a grand and encouraging example that it may be said that there was finally some little happiness resulting from this suffering which I have undergone and this virtue to which I have returned!

The soul that loves and suffers is in the sublime state.

This exists. It can be seen. It can be touched. These in pace, these dungeons, these iron hinges, these necklets, that lofty peep-hole on a level with the rivers current, that box of stone closed with a lid of granite like a tomb, with this difference, that the dead man here was a living being, that soil which is but mud, that vault hole, those oozing walls, --what declaimers!

He had the confidence of a man who had never been wounded.

Die, very good, but do not make others die. Suicides like the one which is about to take place here are sublime, but suicide is restricted, and does not allow of extension; and so soon as it affects your neighbors, suicide becomes murder.

Monsieur Bienvenu was simply a man who accepted these mysterious questions...and who had in his soul a deep respect for the mystery which enveloped them.

They are les misérables - the outcasts, the underdogs. And who is to blame? Is it not the most fallen who have most need of charity?

She had spears of straw and grass in her hair, not like Ophelia gone mad through contact with Hamlets madness, but because she had slept in some stable loft.

I have an old hat which is not worth three francs, I have a coat which lacks buttons in front, my shirt is all ragged, my elbows are torn, my boots let in the water; for the last six weeks I have not thought about it, and I have not told you about it. You only see me at night, and you give me your love; if you were to see me in the daytime, you would give me a sou!

Cosette, by learning that she was beautiful, lost the grace of not knowing it; an exquisite grace, for beauty heightened by artlessness is ineffable, and nothing is so adorable as dazzling innocence, going on her way, and holding in her hand, all unconsciousness, the key of a paradise.

He had to accept the fate of every newcomer to a small town where there are plenty of tongues that gossip and few minds that think.

Without knowing it, Javert in his awful happiness was deserving of pity, like every ignorant man who triumphs. Nothing could have been more poignant or more heartrending than that countenance on which was inscribed all the evil in what is good.

The sole social evil is darkness; humanity is identity, for all men are made of the same clay.

Isnt there in every human soul...an initial spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this world, immortal in the next, that good can bring out, prime, ignite, set on fire and cause to blaze splendidly, and that evil can never extinguish?

Argot is both a literary and a social phenomenon. What is argot, properly speaking? Argot is the language of misery.

Melancholy is the happiness of being sad.

And do you know Monsieur Marius? I believe I was a little in love with you.

Slowly he took out the clothes in which, ten years beforem Cosette had left Montfermeil; first the little dress, then the black scarf, then the great heavy childs shoes Cosette could still almost have worn, so small was her foot, then the vest of very thich fustian, then the knitted petticoat, the the apron with pockets, then the wool stockings.... Then his venerable white head fell on the bed, this old stoical heart broke, his face was swallowed up, so to speak, in Cosettes clothes, and anybody who had passed along the staircase at that moment would have heard irrepressible sobbing.

A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in--what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.