Quotes by Victor Hugo

“He who opens a school door, closes a prison.”

“Shame, Depair, Soltude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones,- and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.”

“Dont ask me to leave you and turn back. I will go where you go and live where you live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God.”

“Much of the marble coldness of Hesters impression was to be attributed to the circumstance that her life had turned, in a great measure, from passion and feeling, to thought. Standing alone, as to any dependent on society, and with little Pearl to be guided and protected- alone, and hopeless of retrieving her position, even as she had not scorned to consider it desirable, she cast away the fragments of a broken chain.”

“In all you do, do it heartily as if working for the Lord and not for men.”

“Ask not the name of him who asks you for a bed. It is especially he whose name is a burden to him, who has need of an asylum (room).”

“As in the rankest soil the most beautiful flowers are grown, so in the dark soil of poverty the choicest flowers of humanity have developed and bloomed.”

“For behold, I, God, have asuffered• these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent; But if they would not repent they must suffer• even as I; Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not• drink the bitter cup, and shrink”

“Je hais vos idées, mais je me ferait tuer pour que vous ayez le droit de les exprimer.I hate your ideas, but I would have myself killed so that you could have the right to expres them.”

“There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.”

“Do not ask the name of the person who seeks a bed for the night. He who is reluctant to give his name is the one who most needs shelter.”

“One is not idle because one is absorbed. There is both visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil, to think is to do. The crossed arms work, the clasped hands act. The eyes upturned to Heaven are an act of creation.”

“He does not weep who does not see”

What Is Love? I have met in the streets a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul

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 greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

I have been loving you a little more every minute since this morning.

Marius and Cosette were in the dark in regard to each other. They did not speak, they did not bow, they were not acquainted; they saw each other; and, like the stars in the sky separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing upon each other.

Love is the only future God offers.

Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.