Victor Hugo

“This is the shade of difference: the door of the physician should never be shut, the door of the priest should always be open.”

“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.”

“Kawan-kawan semua, dimasa yang akan datang tidak boleh lagi ada kegelapan, tidak juga desingan peluru. tidak ada lagi kebodohan yang begitu keji atau pertimpahan darah. Karena tak ada lagi setan, maka tak akan ada lagi malaikat. Di masa depan tidak boleh ada lagi manusia membantai sesamanya, bumi akan menjadi terang, umat manusia akan saling mencinta. akan tiba suatu hari ketika semuanya terasa damai, harmonis, terang benderang, menggembirakan dan begitu hidup. Hari itu akan datang dan itulah sebabnya mengapa kita akan menyongsong maut.”

“Tatkala semesta menciut menjadi sesosok makhluk, tatkala sesosok makhluk meluas bahkan sampai menjangkau Tuhan, maka itulah cinta.”

“Night sometimes lends such tragic assistance to catastrophe.”

“Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.”

“Clearly, he had his own strange way of judging things. I suspect he acquired it from the Gospels.”

“Sire," said M. Myriel, "you are looking at a good man, and I at a great man. Each of us can profit by it.”

“Chapter1M. Myriel”

“The best way to look at the soul is through closed eyes.”

“Aures habet, et non audiet.”

“Death does not concern me. He who takes his first step uses perhaps his last shoes. (Halmalo)”

“The aim to which I have aspired for so many years, my nightly dream, the object of my prayers in heaven, Security- I have gained it. It is God's will. I must do nothing contrary to the will of God. And why is it God's will? That I may carry on what I have begun, that I may do good, that I may be one day a grand and encouraging example, that it may be said that there was finally some little happiness resulting from this suffering which I have undergone and this virtue to which I have returned! It is decided, let the matter alone! Let us not interfere with God!”

“Marius made a movement.'Oh, don't go!' she said. 'It won't be long.'She was sitting almost upright, but her voice was very low and broken by hiccoughs. At moments she struggled for breath. Raising her face as near as she could to Marius', she said, with a strange expression:'Look, I can't cheat you. I have a letter for you in my pocket. I've had it since yesterday. I was asked to post it, but I didn't. I didn't want you to get it. But you might be angry with me when we meet again. Because we shall all meet again, shan't we? Take your letter.'With a convulsive movement she seized Marius' hand with her own injured one, but without seeming to feel the pain, and guided it to her pocket.'Take it,' she said.Marius took out the letter, and she made a little gesture of satisfaction and acceptance.'Now you must promise me something for my trouble...' She paused.'What?' asked Marius.'Do you promise?''Yes, I promise.''You must kiss me on the forehead after I'm dead...I shall know.'She let her head fall back on his knees; her lids fluttered, and then she was motionless. He thought that the sad soul had left her. But then, when he thought it was all over, she slowly opened her eyes that were now deep with the shadow of death, and said in a voice so sweet that it seemed already to come from another world:'You know, Monsieur Marius, I think I was a little bit in love with you.'She tried to smile, and died.”

“Don't you recognize me?''No.''Eponine.'Marius bent hastily forward and saw that it was indeed that unhappy girl, clad in a man's clothes.'How do you come to be here? What are you doing?''I'm dying,' she said.There are words and happenings which arouse even souls in the depths of despair. Marius cried, as though starting out of sleep:'You're wounded! I'll carry you into the tavern. They'll dress your wound. Is it very bad? How am I to lift you without hurting you? Help, someone! But what are you doing here?'He tried to get an arm underneath her to raise her up, and in doing so touched her hand. She uttered a weak cry.'Did I hurt you?''A little.''But I only touched your hand.'She lifted her hand for him to see, and he saw a hole in the centre of the palm.'What happened?' he asked.'A bullet went through it.''A bullet? But how?''Don't you remember a musket being aimed at you?''Yes, and a hand was clapped over it.''That was mine.'Marius shuddered.'What madness! Your poor child! Still, if that's all, it might be worse. I'll get you to a bed and they'll bind you up. One doesn't die of a wounded hand.'She murmured:'The ball passed through my hand, but it came out through my back. It's no use trying to move me. I'll tell you how you can treat my wound better than any surgeon. Sit down on that stone, close beside me.'Marius did so. She rested her head on his knee and said without looking at him:'Oh, what happiness! What bliss! Now I don't feel any pain.”

“There were corpses here and there and pools of blood. I remember seeing a butterfly flutter up and down that street. Summer does not abdicate.”

“Bishop”

“On ne se connaît pas tant qu'on n'a pas bu ensemble.”

“The infinite space that each man carries within himself, wherein despairingly he contrasts the movement of his spirit with the acts of his life, is and overpowering thing.”

“If mankind is to advance there must be installed permanently at the head of its columns proud instances of courage. Acts of daring light the pages of history and the soul of man. The sunrise is an act of daring. To venture, to defy, to persevere, to be true to one's self, to grapple with destiny, to dismay calamity by not being afraid of it, to challenge now unrighteous powers and now victory run wild, to stand fast and hold firm - these are the examples that the peoples need, the spark that electrifies them.”

“You shouldn't abuse the revolutionaries, Mother Streetcorner. My pistol is on your side. It's to help you find more things worth eating in your basket.”

“Anger may be foolish and absurd, and one may be wrongly irritated, but a man never feels outraged unless in some respect he is fundamentally right.”

“I was confided to your loyalty and accepted by your treason; you offer my death to those to whom you had promised my life. Do you know who it is you are destroying here? It is yourself.”

“I encountered in the street a penniless young man who was in love. His hat was old and his jacket worn, with holes at the elbows; water soaked through his shoes, but starlight flooded through his soul.”

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

“On the one side blind force, on the other a soul.”

“A tempest ceases, a cyclone passes over, a wind dies down, a broken mast can be replaced, a leak can be stopped, a fire extinguished, but what will become of this enormous brute of bronze?”

“There are men who work hard, digging for gold: he worked hard, digging for pity. The misery of the world was his mine. Pain everywhere was an occasion for goodness always.”

“A strange thing has happened, do you know? I am in darkness. There is a person who, departing, took away the sun.”

“Thus those two beings, so exclusively and touchingly devoted, who had lived so long for each other alone, came to suffer side by side, each through the other, without ever speaking of the matter, without reproaches, each wearing a smile.”

“Certainly they appeared utterly depraved, corrupt, vile and odious; but it is rare for those who have sunk so low not to be degraded in the process, and there comes a point, moreover, where the unfortunate and the infamous are grouped together, merged in a single, fateful word. They are les miserables - the outcasts, the underdogs. And who is to blame? Is it not the most fallen who have most need of charity?”

“He returned the money with a graceful letter saying that he had found a means of livelihood which would supply him with all his needs. At the moment he had three francs in the world.”

“His mind could do without faith, but his heart could not do without friendship.”

“To see nothing of a person makes it possible to credit him with all the perfection.”

“The episcopal palace of D—— adjoins the hospital.”

“Freedom begins where it ends ignorance”

“Gauvin reprit :-Et la femme? qu'en faites-vous?Cimourdain répondit:-Ce qu'elle est. La servante de l'homme.-Oui. À une condition.-Laquelle?-C'est que l'homme sera le serviteur de la femme.-Y penses-tu? s'écria Cimourdain, l'homme serviteur! Jamais. L'homme est maître . Je n'admet qu'une royauté, celle du foyer. L'homme chez lui est roi.-Oui. À une condition.-Laquelle?-C'est que la femme y sera reine.”

“An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come”

“With a tiny bit of effort, the nettle would be useful; if you neglect it, it becomes a pest. So then we kill it. How many men are like nettles... My friends, there is no such thing as a weed and no such thing as a bad man. There are only bad cultivators.”

“There comes an hour when protest no longer suffices; after philosophy there must be action; the strong hand finishes what the idea has sketched.”

“To be a saint is the exception; to be an upright man is the rule. Err, fall, sin if you will, but be upright.”

“He was there alone with himself, collected, tranquil, adoring, comparing the serenity of his heart with the serenity of the skies, moved in the darkness by the visible splendors of the constellations, and the invisible splendor of God, opening his soul to the thoughts which fall from the Unknown. In such moments, offering up his heart at the hour when the flowers of night inhale their perfume, lighted like a lamp in the center of the starry night, expanding his soul in ecstasy in the midst of the universal radiance of creation, he could not himself perhaps have told what was passing in his own mind; he felt something depart from him, and something descend upon him, mysterious interchanges of the depths of the soul with the depths of the universe.”

“Monsieur Bienvenu was simply a man who accepted these mysterious questions...and who had in his soul a deep respect for the mystery which enveloped them.”

“He sought...to transform the grief which looks down into the grave by showing it the grief which looks up to the stars.”

“As we see, he had a strange and peculiar way of judging things. I suspect that he acquired it from the Gospel.”

“The animal is ignorant of the fact that he knows. The man is aware of the fact that he is ignorant.”

“What am I to do on this earth? The choice rests with me: suffer or enjoy. Whither will suffering lead me? To nothingness; but I shall have suffered. Whither will enjoyment lead me? To nothingness; but I will have enjoyed myself.”

“Let us never fear robbers nor murderers. Those are dangers from without, petty dangers. Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices are the real murderers. The great dangers lie within ourselves.”

“Sometimes he dug in his garden; again, he read or wrote. He had but one word for both these kinds of toil; he called them gardening. "The mind is a garden," said he.”

“Eksige, olge nõrgad, patustage, kuid olge õiglased.”