Quotes by Victor Hugo

Because things are not agreeable, said Jean Valjean, that is no reason for being unjust towards God.

One may, in a case of exigency, introduce the reader in to a nuptial chamber, not into a virginal chamber. Verse would hardly venture it, prose must not.It is the interior of a flower that is not yet unfolded, it is whiteness in the dark, it is the private cell of a closed lily, which must not be gazed upon by man so long as the sun has not gazed upon it. Woman in the bud is sacred. That innocent bud which opens, that adorable half-nudity which is afraid of itself, that white foot which takes refuge in a slipper, that throat which veils itself before a mirror as though a mirror were an eye, that chemise which makes haste to rise up and conceal the shoulder for a creaking bit of furniture or a passing vehicle, those cords tied, those clasps fastened, those laces drawn, those tremors, those shivers of cold and modesty, that exquisite affright in every movement, that almost winged uneasiness where there is no cause for alarm, the successive phases of dressing, as charming as the clouds of dawn,—it is not fitting at all that all this should be narrated, and it is too much to have even called attention to it.

Curiosity is gluttony. To see is to devour.

Sin as little as possible-that is the law of mankind. Not to sin at all is the dream of the angel. All earthly things are subject to sin. Sin is like gravity.

To be a saint is to be an exception; to be a true man is the rule. Err, fail, sin if you must, but be upright. To sin as little as possible is the law for men; to sin not at all is a dream for angels. All earthly things are subject to sin; if is like the force of gravity.

To commit the least possible sin is the law for man. To live without sin is the dream of an angel. Everything terrestrial is subject to sin. Sin is a gravitation.

Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.

Hope is the Word which God has written on the brow of every man.

Wide horizons lead the soul to broad ideas; circumscribed horizons engender narrow ideas; this sometimes condemns great hearts to become small minded.Broad ideas hated by narrow ideas,—this is the very struggle of progress.

In that pallid and sullen shadow in which he crawled, whenever he turned his head and endeavoured to raise his eyes, he saw, with mingled rage and terror, forming, massing, and mounting up out of sight above him with horrid escarpments, a kind of frightful accumulation of things, of laws, of prejudices, of men, and of acts, the outlines of which escaped him, the weight of which appalled him, and which was no other than that prodigious pyramid that we call civilization.

He did not seek to efface pain in forgetfulness, he sought to elevate it and to dignify it with hope. He would say, Be careful how you turn to the dead. Dont think of the rotting. Hold your gaze and you will see the living light of your dearly loved departed up above in heaven.

To love and be loved, that is the miracle of youth

Tall and thin, Mademoiselle Baptistine was a pale and gentle person. She was the incarnation of the word respectable, whereas to be venerable, a woman should lso be a mother.

The principle is twofold, do not forget. The book, as a book, belongs to the author, but as a thought, it belongs – the word is not too extreme – to the human race. All intelligences, all minds, are eligible, all own it. If one of these two rights, the right of the writer and the right of the human mind, were to be sacrificed, it would certainly be the right of the writer, because the public interest is our only concern, and that must take precedence in anything that comes before us.

From a political point of view, there is but one principle, the sovereignty of man over himself. This sovereignty of myself over myself is called Liberty

A day will come when there will be no battlefields, but markets opening to commerce and minds opening to ideas.

Let us show that, if the people abandon the republicans, the republicans do not abandon the people.

What a grand thing it is to be loved! What a far grander thing it is to love! The heart becomes heroic, by dint of passion.

Thought is the toil of the intelligence, revery its voluptuousness. To replace thought with revery is to confound a poison with a food.

A certain amount of reverie is good, like a narcotic in discreet doses. It soothes the fever, occasionally high, of the brain at work, and produces in the mind a soft, fresh vapor that corrects the all too angular contours of pure thought, fills up the gaps and intervals here and there, binds them together, and dulls the sharp corners of ideas. But too much reverie submerges and drowns. Thought is the labor of the intellect, reverie its pleasure. To replace thought with reverie is to confound poison with nourishment.