Victor Hugo Quotes

With moral degradation goes political degradation. Conclusion, Part First, III

A little girl without a doll is almost as unhappy, and quite as impossible, as a woman without children.

An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise.

there is a point when the unfortunate and the infamous are associated and confused in a word, a mortal word, les miserables

If you are stone, be magnetic; if a plant, be sensitive; but if you are human be love.

Be proud, Frenchmen! Lift high your heads, Frenchmen! You are no longer anything, and this man is everything! He holds in his hand your intelligence, as a child holds a bird. Any day he pleases, he can strangle the genius of France. Book V, IX

France is great because she is France.

Let us study things that are no more. It is necessary to understand them, if only to avoid them.

"The beautiful is as useful as the useful." He added after a moment’s silence, "Perhaps more so."

Now for my pains, promise me-“
And she hesitated.
“What?” asked Marius.
“Promise me!”
“I promise you.”
“Promise to kiss me on the forehead when I’m dead. I’ll feel it.”
She let her head fall back on Marius’s knees and her eyelids closed. He thought the poor soul had gone. Eponine lay motionless, but just when Marius supposed her forever asleep, she slowly opened her eyes, revealing the somber depths of death, and said to him in an accent whose sweetness 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 tried to smile again and died.

Ce qu’on ne peut dire et ce qu’on ne peut taire, la musique l’exprime.

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.

Ecclesiastes names thee Almighty, the Maccabees name thee Creator, the Epistle to the Ephesians names thee Liberty, Baruch names thee Immensity, the Psalms name thee Wisdom and Truth, John names thee Light, the Book of Kings names thee Lord, Exodus names thee Providence, Leviticus Sanctity, Esdras Justice, creation names thee God, man names thee Father; but Solomon names thee Compassion, which is the most beautiful of all thy names.

Nature is pitiless; she never withdraws her flowers, her music, her fragrance and her sunlight, from before human cruelty or suffering. She overwhelms man by the contrast between divine beauty and social hideousness. She spares him nothing of her loveliness, neither wing or butterfly, nor song of bird; in the midst of murder, vengeance, barbarism, he must feel himself watched by holy things; he cannot escape the immense reproach of universal nature and the implacable serenity of the sky. The deformity of human laws is forced to exhibit itself naked amidst the dazzling rays of eternal beauty. Man breaks and destroys; man lays waste; man kills; but the summer remains summer; the lily remains the lily; and the star remains the star.
...
As though it said to man, 'Behold my work. and yours.

Il dort. Quoique le sort fut pour lui bien étrange,
Il vivait. Il mourut quand il n’eut plus son ange.
La choise simplement d’elle-même arriva.
Comme la nuit se fait lorsque le jour s’en va.

He is asleep. Though his mettle was sorely tried,
He lived, and when he lost his angel, died.
It happened calmly, on its own.
The way night comes when day is done.