Victor Hugo

“Do you hear the people sing? Singing a song of angry men”

“Djali trotted along behind them, so overjoyed at seeing Gringoire again that she constantly made him stumble by affectionately putting her horns between his legs. 'That's life,' said the philosopher, each time he narrowly escaped falling flat on his face. 'It's often our best friends who cause our downfall.”

“He had to accept the fate of every newcomer to a small town where there are plenty of tongues that gossip and few minds that think.”

“What more could he need, this old man whose little leisure was divided between day-time gardening and night-time contemplation? Was not that narrow space with the sky its ceiling room enough for the worship of God in the most delicate of his works and in the most sublime? A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in -what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.”

“The victory of humanity over man.Humanity had conquered the inhuman.And by what means? In what way? How had it overcome the giant of anger and hatred? What arms had it used? What engine of war? The cradle.”

“The unforeseen, that strange, haughty power which plays with man, had seized Gauvain and held him fast.”

“It is difficult to frighten those who are easily astonished; ignorance causes fearlessness. Children have so little claim on hell, that if they should see it they would admire it.”

“He had the confidence of a man who had never been wounded.”

“Creyéndose bella, conocía muy bien, aunque de un modo vago, que tenía un arma. Las mujeres juegan con su belleza como los niños con un cuchillo, y se hieren.”

“Cossette, al saber que era hermosa, perdió la gracia de ignorarlo; gracia exquisita, porque la belleza realzada por la sencillez es inefable, y no hay nada más digno de adoración que una inocencia deslumbradora que lleva en la mano, sin saberlo, la llave de un paraíso.”

“And confronting these men, wild and terrible as we agree that they were, there were men of quite another kind, smiling and adorned with ribbons and stars, silk stockinged, yellow gloved and with polished boots; men who insisted on the preservation of the past, of the Middle Ages, of divine right, of bigotry, ignorance, enslavement, the death penalty and war, and who, talking in polished undertones, glorified the sword and the executioners' block. For our part, if we had to choose between the barbarians of civilization and those civilized upholders of barbarism we would choose the former.”

“We say and exclaim within ourselves without breaking silence, in a tumult where everything speaks except our mouths. The realities of the soul are none the less real for being invisible and impalpable.”

“Particularly at those moments when we have the sorest need of grasping the sharp realities of life do the threads of thought snap off in the brain. ”

“Argot is both a literary and a social phenomenon. What is argot, properly speaking? Argot is the language of misery.”

“A wretched woman is more unfortunate than a wretched man, because she is an instrument of pleasure.”

“I have an old hat which is not worth three francs, I have a coat which lacks buttons in front, my shirt is all ragged, my elbows are torn, my boots let in the water; for the last six weeks I have not thought about it, and I have not told you about it. You only see me at night, and you give me your love; if you were to see me in the daytime, you would give me a sou!”

“Wide horizons lead the soul to broad ideas; circumscribed horizons engender narrow ideas; this sometimes condemns great hearts to become small minded.Broad ideas hated by narrow ideas,—this is the very struggle of progress.”

“Wonderful nature has a double meaning, which dazzles great minds and blinds uncultivated souls. When man is ignorant, when the desert is filled with visions, the darkness of solitude is added to the darkness of intelligence; hence, in man, the possibilities of perdition”

“That figure stood for a long time wholly in the light; this arose from a certain legendary dimness evolved by the majority of heroes, and which always veils the truth for a longer or shorter time; but to-day history and daylight have arrived.That light called history is pitiless; it possesses this peculiar and divine quality, that, pure light as it is, and precisely because it is wholly light, it often casts a shadow in places where people had hitherto beheld rays; from the same man it constructs two different phantoms, and the one attacks the other and executes justice on it, and the shadows of the despot contend with the brilliancy of the leader. Hence arises a truer measure in the definitive judgments of nations. Babylon violated lessens Alexander, Rome enchained lessens Caesar, Jerusalem murdered lessens Titus, tyranny follows the tyrant. It is a misfortune for a man to leave behind him the night which bears his form.”

“The Revolution came; events succeeded each other with precipitation; the parliamentary families, decimated, pursued, hunted down, were dispersed. M. Charles Myriel emigrated to Italy at the very beginning of the Revolution. There his wife died of a malady of the chest, from which she had long suffered. He had no children. What took place next in the fate of M. Myriel? The ruin of the French society of the olden days, the fall of his own family, the tragic spectacles of '93, which were, perhaps, even more alarming to the emigrants who viewed them from a distance, with the magnifying powers of terror,—did these cause the ideas of renunciation and solitude to germinate in him? Was he, in the midst of these distractions, these affections which absorbed his life, suddenly smitten with one of those mysterious and terrible blows which sometimes overwhelm, by striking to his heart, a man whom public catastrophes would not shake, by striking at his existence and his fortune? No one could have told: all that was known was, that when he returned from Italy he was a priest.”

“Il vient une heure où protester ne suffit plus : après la philosophie, il faut l’action.”

“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 serenity does not suffer from these north winds. Above Revolutions, Truth and Justice reign, as the starry heavens above the tempest.”

“So a voice in the mountain is enough to let loose an avalanche. A word too much may be followed by a caving in. If the word had not been spoken, it would not have happened.”

“The Convention promulgated this great axiom: "The liberty of one citizen ends where the liberty of another citizen begins," which comprises in two lines the entire law of human society.”

“To commit the least possible sin is the law for man. To live without sin is the dream of an angel. Everything terrestrial is subject to sin. Sin is a gravitation.”

“After the dazzling orgies in form and color of the eighteenth century, art was put on a diet, and allowed nothing but the straight line. This sort of progress ended in ugliness. Art reduced to a skeleton, was the result. This was the advantage of this kind of wisdom and abstinence; the style was so sober that it became lean.”

“Because things are not agreeable," said Jean Valjean, "that is no reason for being unjust towards God.”

“There is a sacred horror about everything grand. It is easy to admire mediocrity and hills; but whatever is too lofty, a genius as well as a mountain, an assembly as well as a masterpiece, seen too near, is appalling. Every summit seems an exaggeration. Climbing wearies. The steepnesses take away one's breath; we slip on the slopes, we are hurt by the sharp points which are its beauty; the foaming torrents betray the precipices, clouds hide the mountain tops; mounting is full of terror, as well as a fall. Hence, there is more dismay than admiration. People have a strange feeling of aversion to anything grand. They see abysses, they do not see sublimity; they see the monster, they do not see the prodigy.”

“A beautiful woman is a casus belli; a pretty woman is flagrant misdemeanour. All the invasions of history have been determined by petticoats.”

“Sometimes, if the two old womenwere not asleep, they heard him pacing slowly along the walks at a veryadvanced hour of the night. He was there alone, communing with himself,peaceful, adoring, comparing the serenity of his heart with theserenity of the ether, moved amid the darkness by the visible splendor ofthe constellations and the invisible splendor of God, opening his heart tothe thoughts which fall from the Unknown. At such moments, while heoffered his heart at the hour when nocturnal flowers offer their perfume,illuminated like a lamp amid the starry night, as he poured himself outin ecstasy in the midst of the universal radiance of creation, he could nothave told himself, probably, what was passing in his spirit; he feltsomething take its flight from him, and something descend into him.Mysterious exchange of the abysses of the soul with the abysses of theuniverse!”

“Every skull-cap may dream of the tiara. The priest is nowadays the only man who can become a king in a regular manner; and what a king! the supreme king.”

“Intelligence is the wife, imagination is your mistress and memory is your slave.”

“Is there not in every human soul a primitive spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this world and immortal in the next, which can be developed by goodness, kindled, lit up, and made to radiate, and which evil can never entirely extinguish.”

“People weighed down with troubles do not look back; they know only too well that misfortune stalks them.”

“There are no bad plants or bad men. There is only bad husbandry.”

“La doctrina significa aquello que hace que el pueblo esté en armonía con su gobernante, de modo que le siga donde sea, sin temer por sus vidas ni a correr cualquier peligro.”

“Hay siempre en el pensamiento cierta cantidad de rebelión interior, y le irritaba sentirla dentro de sí.”

“No tenían ya palabras. Las estrellas empezaban a brillar. ¿Cómo fue que sus labios se encontraron? ¿Cómo es que el pájaro canta, que la nieve se funde, que la rosa se abre? Un beso; eso fue todo. Los dos se estremecieron, y se miraron en la sombra con ojos brillantes. No sentían ni el frío de la noche, ni la frialdad de la piedra,ni la humedad de la tierra, ni la humedad de las hojas; se miraban y tenían el corazón lleno de pensamientos. Se habían cogido de las manos sin saberlo.”

“Los que padecéis porque amáis, amad más aún. Morir de amor es vivir”

“Terminar este duelo, amalgamar la idea pura con la realidad humana, hacer penetrar pacíficamente el derecho en el hecho y e hecho en el derecho, es el trabajo de los sabios.”

“Aquí el hombre se convierte en dragón. Tener hambre, tener sed es el punto de partida, ser Satanás es el punto de llegada.”

“¿Qué había esta vez en la mirada de la joven? Marius no hubiera podido decirlo. No había nada y lo había todo. Fue un relámpago extraño.[...]Es una especie de ternura indecisa que se revela al azar y que espera. Es una trampa que la inocencia arma sin saberlo, donde atrapa a dos corazones sin quererlo.”

“En esos momentos de la existencia en que el hombre tiene necesidad de orgullo porque tiene necesidad de amor.”

“Es que tiene en el alma una perla, la inocencia; y las perlas no se disuelven en el fango.[...]Se revuelca en estiércol y sale de él recubierto de estrellas.”

“Asociad estas dos ideas, París y la infancia, que contienen la una todo el fuego, la otra toda la aurora; haced que choquen estas dos chispas, y el resultado es un pequeño ser.”

“No era la facultad de amar lo que le faltaba, sino la posibilidad.”

“Querer prohibir a la imaginación que vuelva a una idea es lo mismo que prohibir al mar que vuelva a la playa.”

“Se dice que en toda manada de lobos hay un perro al que la loba mata, porque si lo deja vivir al crecer devoraría a los demás cachorros. Dad un rostro humano a este perro hijo de loba y tendréis el retrato de aquel hombre.”

“Confiar es a veces abandonar.”

“We blame the church when she is saturated with intrigues, we despisethe spiritual which is harsh toward the temporal; but we everywherehonor the thoughtful man.”