Victor Hugo Quotes

Winter changes into stone the water of heaven and the heart of man.

Oh! Everything I loved!

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

To be a saint is the exception; to be a just person is the rule. Err, stumble, commit sin, but be one of the just.

So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to divine destiny; so long as the three great problems of the century — the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light — are unsolved; so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the world; — in other words, and with a still wider significance, so long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Misérables cannot fail to be of use. HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, 1862. [Translation by Isabel F. Hapgood]

True or false, that which is said of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all in their destinies, as that which they do.

This will destroy that. The book will kill the edifice.

There is always a patch of blue sky to lovers, although the rest of the world may see nothing but their umbrellas.

You are never fully dressed until you put on a smile!

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

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

Her soul trembled on her lips like a drop of dew on a flower.

If anything is horrible, if there is a reality that surpasses our worst dreams, it is this: to live, to see the sun, to be in full possession of manly vigor, to have health and joy, to laugh heartily, to rush toward a glory that lures you on, to feel lungs that breathe, a heart that beats, a mind that thinks, to speak, to hope, to love; to have mother, wife, children, to have sunlight, and suddenly, in less time than it takes to cry out, to plunge into an abyss, to fall, to roll, to crush, to be crushed, to see the heads of grain, the flowers, the leaves, the branches, unable to catch hold of anything, to feel your sword useless, men under you, horses over you, to struggle in vain, your bones broken by some kick in the darkness, to feel a heel gouging your eyes out of their sockets, raging at the horseshoe between your teeth, to stifle, to howl, to twist, to be under all this, and to say, ‘Just then I was a living man!

He who is not master of his own thoughts is not accountable for his own deeds.

Among all these passionate hearts and all these undoubting minds there was one skeptic. How did he happen to be there? From juxtaposition. The name of this skeptic was Grantaire, and he usually signed with this rebus: R. Grantaire was a man who took good care not to believe in anything.