Victor Hugo Quotes

There are men who work hard, digging for gold: he worked hard, digging for pity. The misery of the world was his mine. Pain everywhere was an occasion for goodness always.

There are plenty who regard a wall behind which something is happening as a very curious thing.

There are souls which, crab-like, crawl continually toward darkness, going back in life rather than advancing in it, using what experience they have to increase their deformity, growing worse without...

There are two stages - living on little, and living on nothing. They are like two rooms, the first dark, the second pitch-black.

There comes a day when the young girl glances in this manner. Woe to him who chances to be there! That first gaze of a soul which does not, as yet, know itself, is like the dawn in the sky. It

There is lucidity inspired by the nearness of the grave:to be close to death is to see clearly

There is no vacuum in the human heart. Certain demolitions take place, and it is well that they do, but on condition that they are followed by reconstructions.

There is one thing sadder than to see one's children die; it is to see them leading an evil life.

Therefore, said the Bishop, I intend to go without escort. You do not really mean that, Monseigneur! exclaimed the mayor. I do mean it so thoroughly that I absolutely refuse any gendarmes, and shall s...

These are dark radiances. They have no suspicion that they are to be pitied. Certainly they are so. He who does not weep does not see. They are to be admired and pitied, as one would both pity and adm...

This book is a drama, whose leading personage is the Infinite.

This first glance of a soul which does not yet know itself is like the dawn in the sky. It is the awakening of something radiant and unknown. Nothing can express the dangerous chasm of this unlooked-f...

This is the shade of meaning: the door of a physician should never be closed; the door of a priest should always be open.

Thought is the labour of the intellect, reverie is its pleasure. To replace thought by reverie is to confound poison with nourishment.

Thus is youth constituted; it quickly wipes its eye; it believes sorrow useless and does not accept it. Youth is the smile of the future before an unknown being which is itself. It is natural for it t...

Thus those two beings, so exclusively and touchingly devoted, who had lived so long for each other alone, came to suffer side by side, each through the other, without ever speaking of the matter, with...

Time is greedy, man is greedier

To a gargoyle on the ramparts of Notre Dame as Esmeralda rides off with Gringoire Quasimodo says. Why was I not made of stone like thee?

To blame or praise men on account of the result, is almost like praising or blaming figures on account of the sum total. Whatever is to happen, happens; whatever is to blow, blows. The eternal serenit...

To breath the air of Paris preserves the soul.