Victor Hugo Quotes

To put everything in balance is good, to put everything in harmony is better.

You are right, sir, when you tell me that Les Misérables is written for all nations. I do not know whether it will be read by all, but I wrote it for all. It is addressed to England as well as to Spain, to Italy as well as to France, to Germany as well as to Ireland, to Republics which have slaves as well as to Empires which have serfs. Social problems surpass frontiers. The sores of the human race, those great sores which cover the globe, do not halt at the red or blue lines traced upon the map. In every place where man is ignorant and despairing, in every place where woman is sold for bread, wherever the child suffers for lack of the book which should instruct him and of the hearth which should warm him, the book of Les Misérables knocks at the door and says: "Open to me, I come for you."

One can no more keep the mind from returning to an idea than the sea from returning to a shore. For a sailor, this is called the tide; in the case of the guilty it is called remorse. God stirs up the soul as well as the ocean.

Ma vie est une énigme dont ton nom est le mot. (My life is an enigma, of which your name is the word.)

Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.

Curiosity is one of the forms of feminine bravery.

Do you know what friendship is?' he asked.
'Yes,' replied the gypsy; 'it is to be brother and sister; two souls which touch without mingling, two fingers on one hand.'
'And love?' pursued Gringoire.
'Oh! love!' said she, and her voice trembled, and her eye beamed. 'That is to be two and to be but one. A man and a woman mingled into one angel. It is heaven.

Jésus a pleuré, Voltaire a souri; c’est de cette larme divine et de ce sourire humain qu’est faite la douceur de la civilisation actuelle.

اشتغلت لتعيش .. ثم أحبت لتعيش أيضًا
لأن للقلب جوعه دون شك

A one-eyed man is much more incomplete than a blind man, for he knows what it is that's lacking.

"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?

Monsieur' to a convict is a glass of water to a man dying of thirst at sea; ignominy thirsts for respect.

En somme, je fais ce que je peux, je souffre de la souffrance universelle, et je tâche de la soulager, je n'ai que les chétives forces d'un homme, et je crie à tous: aidez-moi.

Whatever causes night in our souls may leave stars. Cimourdain was full of virtues and truth, but they shine out of a dark background.

One might almost say that affinities begin with the letters of the alphabet. In that sequence, O and P are inseparable. You might just as well say O and P as Orestes and Pylades.
A true satellite of Enjolras, Grantaire lived within this circle of young men. He dwelt among them, only with them was he happy, he followed them everywhere. His pleasure was to watch these figures come and go in a wine-induced haze. They put up with him because of his good humour.
In his belief, Enjolras looked down on this sceptic; and in his sobriety, on this drunkard. He spared him a little lordly pity.
Grantaire was an unwanted Pylades. Always snubbed by Enjolras, spurned, rebuffed and back again for more, he said of Enjolras, ‘What marmoreal magnificence'.