Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over, men recognize that the human race has been harshly treated but that it has moved forward.
When all was said, his fate, however ugly it might prove to be, was in his own hands; he was its master.
Whatever causes night in our souls may leave stars. Cimourdain was full of virtues and truth, but they shine out of a dark background.
What more was needed by this old man, who divided the leisure of his life, where there was so little leisure, between gardening in the daytime and contemplation at night? Was not this narrow enclosure...
What more could he need, this old man whose little leisure was divided between day-time gardening and night-time contemplation? Was not that narrow space with the sky its ceiling room enough for the w...
We live in the midst of a gloomy society. Success; that is the lesson which falls drop by drop from the slope of corruption.
Victor-Marie Hugo (26 February 1802 — 22 May 1885) was a French poet, novelist, playwright, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights campaigner, and perhaps the most influential exponent of th...
To confide is sometimes to deliver into a person's power.
Thus he shut himself up, he lived there, he was absolutely satisfied with it, leaving on one side the prodigious questions which attract and terrify, the fathomless perspectives of abstraction, the pr...
They were thirsty; this Guillaume brought them water. It was from this well that he drew it. Many drank there their last draught. This well where drank so many of the dead was destined to die itself....
Then live your life, above all things. Make use of your I while you have it.
The unforeseen, that strange, haughty power which plays with man, had seized Gauvain and held him fast.
The soul of a young girl should not be left in the dark; later on, mirages that are too abrupt and too lively are formed there, as in a dark chamber.
The shock caused by the fall of a careless word displaces that against which it strikes. At times it happens, without our knowing why, that because we have received an almost imperceptible blow from a...
The saints were his friends, and blessed him; the monsters were his friends, and guarded him.
The peculiarity of prudery is to station the more sentries the less the fortress is menaced.
The nourishment of the people is a good object; to massacre them is a bad means.
The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.
The future belongs to hearts even more than it does to minds. Love, that is the only thing that can occupy and fill eternity. In the infinite, the inexhaustible is requisite.Love participates of the s...
The first proof of charity in a priest, especially a bishop, is poverty.