Victor Hugo

“Die, very good, but do not make others die. Suicides like the one which is about to take place here are sublime, but suicide is restricted, and does not allow of extension; and so soon as it affects your neighbors, suicide becomes murder.”

“No fear, no regrets.”

“Ništa je umreti - strašno je ne živeti.”

“Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.”

“What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past.”

“So bring me this man, trembling and shivering from head to foot; let me fall into his arms or down at his knees; he will weep and we shall weep, he will be eloquent and I shall be comforted, and my heart shall melt into his, he will take my soul, and I his God.But what is this kindly old gentleman to me? And what am I to him? Just one more member of the race of unfortunates, one more shade to go with the many he has seen, one more figure to add to his total of executions.”

“Fex urbis, lex orbis" (The dregs of the city, the law of the earth), from Les Miserables, attributed to St. Jerome”

“Well, listen a moment, Monsieur Mayor; I have often been severe in my life towards others. It was just. I did right. Now if I were not severe towards myself, all I have justly done would become injustice. Should I spare myself more than others? No. What! if I should be prompt only to punish others and not myself, I should be a wretched indeed! - Javert to M. Madeleine”

“She loved with so much passion as she loved with ignorance. She did not know whether it were good or evil, beneficent or dangerous, necessary or accidental, eternal or transitory, permitted or prohibited: she loved.”

“Initiative is doing the right thing without being told.”

“Great griefs exhaust. They discourage us with life. The man into whom they enter feels something taken from him. In youth, their visit is sad; later on, it is ominous.”

“There is neither a foreign war nor a civil war; there is only just and unjust war.”

“The earth is a great piece of stupidity.”

“Every man who has in his soul a secret feeling of revolt against any act of the State, of life, or of destiny, is on the verge of riot; and so soon as it appears, he begins to quiver, and to feel himself borne away by the whirlwind.”

“You are adorable, mademoiselle. I study your feet with the microscope and your soul with the telescope.”

“Intellectual and moral growth is no less indispensable than material improvement. Knowledge is a viaticum. Though is a prime necessity; truth is nourishment, like wheat. A reasoning faculty, deprived of knowledge and wisdom, pines away. We should feel the same pity for minds that do not eat as for stomachs. If there be anything sadder than a body perishing for want of bread, it is a mind dying of hunger for lack of light. All progress tends toward the solution. Some day, people will be amazed. As the human race ascends, the deepest layers will naturally emerge from the zone of distress. The effacement of wretchedness will be effected by a simple elevation level.”

“Let us never weary of repeating, that to think first of the disinherited and sorrowful classes; to relieve, ventilate, enlighten, and love them; to enlarge their horizon to a magnificent extent; to lavish upon them education in every shape; to set them an example of labor, and never of indolence; to lessen the weight of the individual burden by increasing the notion of the universal aim; to limit poverty without limiting wealth; to create vast fields of public and popular activity; to have, like Briareus, a hundred hands to stretch out on all sides to the crushed and the weak; to employ the collective power in the grand task of opening workshops for every arm, schools for every aptitude, and laboratories for every intellect; to increase wages, diminish toil, and balance the debit and credit--that is to say, proportion enjoyment to effort, and supply to demand; in a word, to evolve from the social machine, on behalf of those who suffer and those who are ignorant, more light and more comfort, is (and sympathetic souls must not forget it) the first of brotherly obligations, and (let egotistic hearts learn the fact) the first of political necessities.”

“Suffering engenders passion; and while the prosperous blind themselves, or go to sleep, the hatred of the unfortunate classes kindles its torch at some sullen or ill-constituted mind, which is dreaming in a corner, and sets to work to examine society. The examination of hatred is a terrible thing.”

“Every day has its great grief or its small anxiety. ... One cloud is dispelled, another forms. There is hardly one day in a hundred of real joy and bright sunshine.”

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

“What precipices are sloth and pleasure! To do nothing is a sorry resolve to take; are you aware of that? To live in indolence on the goods of others, to be useless, that is to say, injurious! This leads straight to the depths of misery. Woe to the man who would be a parasite! He will become vermin! Ah, it does not please you to work! Ah, you have but one thought--to drink well, to eat well, and sleep well. You will drink water; you will eat black bread; you will sleep on a plank, with fetters riveted to your limbs, and you will feel their cold touch at night on your flesh!”

“So your desire is to do nothing? Well, you shall not have a week, a day, an hour, free from oppression. You shall not be able to lift anything without agony. Every passing minute will make your muscles crack. What is feather to others will be a rock to you. The simplest things will become difficult. Life will become monstrous about you. To come, to go, to breathe, will be so many terrible tasks for you. Your lungs will feel like a hundred-pound weight.”

“It is a false and dangerous situation which bases public power on private want, and roots the grandeur of the State in the suffering of the individual. It is a badly constituted grandeur which combines all the material elements, and into which no moral element enters.”

“Revolutions spring not from accident, but from necessity. A revolution is a return from the factitious to the real. It takes place because it must.”

“At the moment when her eyes closed, when all feeling vanished in her, she thought that she felt a touch of fire imprinted on her lips, a kiss more burning than the red-hot iron of the executioner.”

“The counterfeits of the past take assumed names, and are fond of calling themselves the future. That eternally returning spector, the past, not infrequently falsifies its passport.”

“Reality in strong doses frightens.”

“To have lied is to have suffered.”

“One becomes gradually accustomed to poison.”

“Hardly had the light been extinguished, when a peculiar trembling beganto affect the netting under which the three children lay.It consisted of a multitude of dull scratches which produced a metallicsound, as if claws and teeth were gnawing at the copper wire. This wasaccompanied by all sorts of little piercing cries.The little five-year-old boy, on hearing this hubbub overhead, andchilled with terror, jogged his brother's elbow; but the elder brotherhad already shut his peepers, as Gavroche had ordered. Then the littleone, who could no longer control his terror, questioned Gavroche, but ina very low tone, and with bated breath:--"Sir?""Hey?" said Gavroche, who had just closed his eyes."What is that?""It's the rats," replied Gavroche.And he laid his head down on the mat again.The rats, in fact, who swarmed by thousands in the carcass of theelephant, and who were the living black spots which we have alreadymentioned, had been held in awe by the flame of the candle, so long asit had been lighted; but as soon as the cavern, which was the sameas their city, had returned to darkness, scenting what the goodstory-teller Perrault calls "fresh meat," they had hurled themselves inthrongs on Gavroche's tent, had climbed to the top of it, and had begunto bite the meshes as though seeking to pierce this new-fangled trap.Still the little one could not sleep."Sir?" he began again."Hey?" said Gavroche."What are rats?""They are mice."This explanation reassured the child a little. He had seen white mice inthe course of his life, and he was not afraid of them. Nevertheless, helifted up his voice once more."Sir?""Hey?" said Gavroche again."Why don't you have a cat?""I did have one," replied Gavroche, "I brought one here, but they ateher."This second explanation undid the work of the first, and the littlefellow began to tremble again.The dialogue between him and Gavroche began again for the fourth time:--"Monsieur?""Hey?""Who was it that was eaten?""The cat.""And who ate the cat?""The rats.""The mice?""Yes, the rats."The child, in consternation, dismayed at the thought of mice which atecats, pursued:--"Sir, would those mice eat us?""Wouldn't they just!" ejaculated Gavroche.The child's terror had reached its climax. But Gavroche added:--"Don't be afraid. They can't get in. And besides, I'm here! Here, catchhold of my hand. Hold your tongue and shut your peepers!”

“The barber ran to the broken window, and saw Gavroche, who was running with all his might towards the Saint Jean market. On passing the barber's shop, Gavroche, who had the two children on his mind, could not resist the desire to bid him "good day", and had sent a stone through his sash."See!" screamed the barber, who from white had become blue, "he makes mischief. What has anybody done to this Gamin?”

“I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses.”

“The peculiarity of sunrise is to make us laugh at all our terrors of the night, and our laugh is always proportioned to the fear we have had.”

“He who has seen the misery of man only has seen nothing, he must see the misery of woman; he who has seen the misery of woman only has seen nothing, he must see the misery of childhood.”

“Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing.”

“Men become accustomed to poison by degrees”

“Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices are the real murderers. The great dangers lie within ourselves.”

“Desgraciado quien no haya amado mas que cuerpos, formas y apariencias. La muerte le arrebatara todo. Procurad amar las almas y un dia las volvereis a encontrar.”

“victor hugo, Les Contemplations, MorsJe vis cette faucheuse. Elle était dans son champ. Elle allait à grands pas moissonnant et fauchant, Noir squelette laissant passer le crépuscule. Dans l'ombre où l'on dirait que tout tremble et recule, L'homme suivait des yeux les lueurs de la faulx.Et les triomphateurs sous les arcs triomphaux Tombaient ; elle changeait en désert Babylone, Le trône en échafaud et l'échafaud en trône, Les roses en fumier, les enfants en oiseaux,L'or en cendre, et les yeux des mères en ruisseaux. Et les femmes criaient : - Rends-nous ce petit être. Pour le faire mourir, pourquoi l'avoir fait naître ? -Ce n'était qu'un sanglot sur terre, en haut, en bas ; Des mains aux doigts osseux sortaient des noirs grabats ; Un vent froid bruissait dans les linceuls sans nombre ; Les peuples éperdus semblaient sous la faulx sombre Un troupeau frissonnant qui dans l'ombre s'enfuit ; Tout était sous ses pieds deuil, épouvante et nuit.Derrière elle, le front baigné de douces flammes, Un ange souriant portait la gerbe d'âmes.”

“Do what we may to shape the mysterious stuff of which our lives are composed, the dark threads of our destiny will always re-emerge.”

“If you ask the great city, ‘Who is this person?,’ she will answer, ‘He is my child.”

“Books are cold but safe friends”

“Scepticism, that dry caries of the intelligence.”

“There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.”

“by making himself a priest made himself a demon.”

“The first symptom of love in a young man is shyness; the first symptom in a woman, it's boldness.”

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

“My misfortune is that I still resemble a man too much. I should liked to be wholly a beast like that goat. - Quasimodo”

“He had, they said, tasted in succession all the apples of the tree of knowledge, and, whether from hunger or disgust, had ended by tasting the forbidden fruit.”

“The greatest products of architecture are less the works of individuals than of society; rather the offspring of a nation's effort, than the inspired flash of a man of genius...”