Quotes by Victor Hugo

Every day has its great grief or its small anxiety. ... One cloud is dispelled, another forms. There is hardly one day in a hundred of real joy and bright sunshine.

Are you what is called a lucky man? Well, you are sad every day. Each day has its great grief or its little care. Yesterday you were trembling for the health of one who is dear to you, today you fear for your own; tomorrow it will be an anxiety about money, the next day the slanders of a calumniator, the day after the misfortune of a friend; then the weather, then something broken or lost, then a pleasure for which you are reproached by your conscience or your vertebral column; another time, the course of public affairs. Not to mention heartaches. And so on. One cloud is dissipated, another gathers. Hardly one day in a hundred of unbroken joy and sunshine. And you are of that small number who are lucky! As for other men, stagnant night is upon them.

In moments like these, offering up his heart at the hour that night flowers offer up their perfume, lit up like a lamp in the middle of the starry night, full of ecstasy in the middle of the universal radiance of creation, he could not perhaps have said himself what was happening in his spirit; he felt something soar up out of him and something fly down into him. Mysterious exchanges between the bottomless well of the soul and the bottomless well of the universe!

There is nothing like a dream to create the future.

The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real that we exist, it is by the ideal that we live.

In joined hands there is still some token of hope, in the clinched fist none.

Should we continue to look upwards? Is the light we can see in the sky one of those which will presently be extinguished? The ideal is terrifying to behold... brilliant but threatened on all sides by the dark forces that surround it: nevertheless, no more in danger than a star in the jaws of the clouds.

From Les Miserables:All at once, in the midst of this profound calm, a fresh sound arose; a sound as celestial, divine, ineffable, ravishing, as the other had been horrible. It was a hymn which issued from the gloom, a dazzling burst of prayer and harmony in the obscure and alarming silence of the night; womens voices, but voices composed at one and the same time of the pure accents of virgins and the innocent accent of children, -- voices which are not of the earth, and which resemble those that the newborn infant still hears, and which the dying man hears already. This song proceeded from the gloomy edifice which towered above the garden. At the moment when the hubbub of demons retreated, one would have said that a choir of angels was approaching through the gloom.Cosette and Jean Valjean fell on their knees.They knew not what it was, they knew not where they were; but both of them, the man and the child, the penitent and the innocent, felt that they must kneel.These voices had this strange characteristic, that they did not prevent the building from seeming to be deserted. It was a supernatural chant in an uninhabited house. While these voices were singing, Jean Valjean thought of nothing. He no longer beheld the night; he beheld a blue sky. It seemed to him that he felt those wings which we all have within us, unfolding.The song died away. It may have lasted a long time. Jean Valjean could not have told. Hours of ecstasy are never more than a moment.

Le ciel était absolument noir, il ny avait plus détoiles, mais évidemment il en voyait une.

It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.

She let her head fall back upon Marius knees and her eyelids closed. He thought that poor soul had gone. Eponine lay motionless; but just when Marius supposed her for ever asleep, she slowly opened her eyes in which the gloomy deepness of death appeared, and said to him with an accent the sweetness on which already seemed to come from another world:And then, do you know, Monsieur Marius, I believe I was a little in love with you.She essayed to smile again and expired.

I see black light (his last words)

The guillotine is the ultimate expression of Law, and its name is vengeance; it is not neutral, nor does it allow us to remain neutral. All social questions achieve their finality around that blade. The scaffold is an image. It is not merely a framework, a machine, a lifeless mechanism of wood, iron, and rope. It is as though it were a being having its own dark purpose, as though the framework saw, the machine listened, and the mechanism understood; as though that arrangement of wood and iron and rope expressed a will. In the hideous picture which its presence evokes it seems to be most terribly a part of what it does. It is the executioners accomplice; it consumes, devouring flesh and drinking blood. It is a kind of monster created by the judge and the craftsman; a spectre seeming to live an awful life born of the death it deals.

The guillotine is the ultimate expression of Law, and its name is vengeance; it is not neutral, nor does it allow us to remain neutral.

Passando fra gli insorti che si scostavano con religioso rispetto, [papà Mabeuf] continuò dritto verso Enjolras che indietreggiava impietrito, gli strappò la bandiera, e senza che nessuno osasse trattenerlo né aiutarlo, quel vecchio ottuagenario col capo vacillante, ma col piede fermo, salì lentamente la scala di pietre costruita nella barricata. Lo spettacolo era così serio che tutto allintorno dissero: «Giù il cappello!». A ogni gradino che saliva diventava sempre più terribile: i suoi capelli canuti, il volto decrepito, lampia fronte calma e rugosa, gli occhi incavati, la bocca attonita e semiaperta, il vecchio braccio che sosteneva la bandiera rossa, uscivano dallombra e ingigantivano nel sanguinoso chiarore della torcia, e sembrava di vedere lo spettro del 1793 sorgere dalla terra inalberando la bandiera del terrore.Quando fu allultimo gradino, quando quel fantasma tremante e terribile, ritto su quel mucchio di rovine dinanzi a milleduecento fucili invisibili, si drizzò in faccia alla morte come se fosse più forte di essa, tutta la barricata assunse nelle tenebre un aspetto colossale e soprannaturale. Vi fu uno di quegli istanti di silenzio che accompagnano i prodigi. In mezzo a quel silenzio il vegliardo sventolò la bandiera rossa e gridò:«Viva la Rivoluzione! Viva la Repubblica! Fratellanza! Uguaglianza! E morte!».

Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent

victor hugo, Les Contemplations, MorsJe vis cette faucheuse. Elle était dans son champ. Elle allait à grands pas moissonnant et fauchant, Noir squelette laissant passer le crépuscule. Dans lombre où lon dirait que tout tremble et recule, Lhomme suivait des yeux les lueurs de la faulx.Et les triomphateurs sous les arcs triomphaux Tombaient ; elle changeait en désert Babylone, Le trône en échafaud et léchafaud en trône, Les roses en fumier, les enfants en oiseaux,Lor en cendre, et les yeux des mères en ruisseaux. Et les femmes criaient : - Rends-nous ce petit être. Pour le faire mourir, pourquoi lavoir fait naître ? -Ce nétait quun sanglot sur terre, en haut, en bas ; Des mains aux doigts osseux sortaient des noirs grabats ; Un vent froid bruissait dans les linceuls sans nombre ; Les peuples éperdus semblaient sous la faulx sombre Un troupeau frissonnant qui dans lombre senfuit ; Tout était sous ses pieds deuil, épouvante et nuit.Derrière elle, le front baigné de douces flammes, Un ange souriant portait la gerbe dâmes.

Un sceptique qui adhère à un croyant cela est simple comme la loi des couleurs complémentaires.Ce qui nous manque nous attire.

A writer is a world trapped in a person.

Profound hearts, wise minds, take life as God makes it; it is a long trial, and unintelligible preparation for the unknown destiny.