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81c07f7
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Going about one's native land one is inclined to take many things for granted, roads and buildings, roofs, windows and doorways, the walls that shelter strangers, the house one has never entered, trees which are like other trees, pavements which are no more than cobblestones. But when we are distant from them we find that those things have become dear to us, a street, trees and roofs, blank walls, doors and windows; we have entered those ho..
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Victor Hugo |
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6c37d25
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A little garden in which to walk, and immensity in which to dream. At one's feet that which can be cultivated and plucked; over head that which one can study and meditate upon: some flowers on earth and all the stars in the sky.
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Victor Hugo |
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d6bd88c
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A strange thing has happened, do you know? I am in darkness. There is a person who, departing, took away the sun.
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Victor Hugo |
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179962a
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To breathe Paris is to preserve one's soul.
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les-misérables
paris
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Victor Hugo |
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e82219b
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She gave anyone who saw her a sensation of April and of dawn. There was dew in her eyes. Cosette was a condensation of auroral light in womanly form.
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Victor Hugo |
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5c613dd
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Let us be like a bird for a moment perched On a frail branch when he sings;
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Victor Hugo |
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a52aacf
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Let us not, however, exaggerate our power. Whatever man does, the great lines of creation persist; the supreme mass does not depend on man. He has power over the detail, not over the whole. And it is right that this should be so. The Whole is providential. Its laws pass over our head. What we do goes no farther than the surface. Man clothes or unclothes the earth; clearing a forest is like taking off a garment. But to slow down the rotation..
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hugo
eden
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Victor Hugo |
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bbf9a5e
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Clearly, he had his own strange way of judging things. I suspect he acquired it from the Gospels.
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Victor Hugo |
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e5df848
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What is more melancholy and more profound than to see a thousand objects for the first and the last time? To travel is to be born and to die at every instant.
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Victor Hugo |
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510c3bf
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Relegated, as he was, to one corner, and sheltered behind the billiard-table, the soldiers whose eyes were fixed on Enjolras, had not even noticed Grantaire, and the sergeant was preparing to repeat his order: "Take aim!" when all at once, they heard a strong voice shout beside them: "Long live the Republic! I'm one of them." Grantaire had risen. The immense gleam of the whole combat which he had missed, and in which he had had no part, app..
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les-misérables
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Victor Hugo |
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68ffbde
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Daring is the price of progress. All splendid conquests are the prize of boldness, more or less.
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Victor Hugo |
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1baab80
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Without knowing it, Javert in his awful happiness was deserving of pity, like every ignorant man who triumphs. Nothing could have been more poignant or more heartrending than that countenance on which was inscribed all the evil in what is good.
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good
law
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Victor Hugo |
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9aead15
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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.
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Victor Hugo |
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e9ec993
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In 1815, M. Charles-Francois-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D---- He was an old man of about seventy-five years of age; he had occupied the see of D---- since 1806.
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Victor Hugo |
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af228f2
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For dogs we kings should have lions, and for cats, tigers. The great benefits a crown.
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royalty
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Victor Hugo |
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d17bb47
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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.
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Victor Hugo |
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40ffed0
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Now, one cannot read nonsense with impunity.
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Victor Hugo |
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8ff83b9
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Besides, to be fair to him, his viciousness was perhaps not innate. From his earliest steps among men he had felt, then seen himself the object of jeers, condemnation, rejection. Human speech for him always meant mockery and curses. As he grew older he had found nothing but hatred around him. He had caught it. He had acquired the general viciousness. He had picked up the weapon with which he had been wounded.
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Victor Hugo |
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b194734
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A doll is among the most pressing needs as well as the most charming instincts of feminine childhood. To care for it, adorn it, dress and undress it, give it lessons, scold it a little, put it to bed and sing it to sleep, pretend that the object is a living person - all the future of the woman resides in this. Dreaming and murmuring, tending, cossetting, sewing small garments, the child grows into girlhood, from girlhood into womanhood, fro..
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Victor Hugo |
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7ebcfb4
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nhm yqwlwn n ljnwn yTyl l`mr
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Victor Hugo |
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0330436
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n lqlb lbshry l ystTy` 'n yHtwy l `ly kmy@ mHdwd@ mn ly's wmn thm ffy ws` lbHr 'n ymr fwq lsfnj@ dwn 'n yDyf ly my'h dm`@ wHd@ b`d 'n tbtl wtmtly' bh
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Victor Hugo |
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cc1e0f8
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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."
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Victor Hugo |
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2d87cdb
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D'une complexion farouche et bavarde, ayant le desir de ne voir personne et le besoin de parler a quelqu'un, il se tirait d'affaire en se parlant a lui-meme. Quiconque a vecu solitaire sait a quel point le monologue est dans la nature. La parole interieure demange. Haranguer l'espace est un exutoire. Parler tout haut et tout seul, cela fait l'effet d'un dialogue avec le dieu qu'on a en soit.
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solitude
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Victor Hugo |
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bd993f2
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Gavroche had fallen only to rise again; he remained in a sitting posture, a long thread of blood streaked his face, he raised both arms in the air, glanced in the direction whence the shot had come, and began to sing: "Je suis tombe par terre, "I have fallen to the earth, C'est la faute a Voltaire; 'Tis the fault of Voltaire; Le nez dans le ruisseau, With my nose in the gutter, C'est la faute a . . . " 'Tis the fault of . . . " He did n..
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Victor Hugo |
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f1a43ad
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The barber in his shop, warmed by a good stove, was shaving a customer and casting from time to time a look towards this enemy, this frozen and brazen gamin, who had both hands in his pockets, but his wits evidently out of their sheath.
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Victor Hugo |
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0bad3be
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Not ill? No truly, I am young, healthful, and strong; the blood flows freely in my veins; my limbs obey my will; I am robust in mind and body, constituted for a long life. Yes, all this is true; and yet, nevertheless, I have an illness, a fatal illness,--an illness given by the hand of man!
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Victor Hugo |
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3c60c90
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There, at a depth to which divers would find it difficult to descend, are caverns, haunts, and dusky mazes, where monstrous creatures multiply and destroy each other. Huge crabs devour fish and are devoured in their turn. Hideous shapes of living things, not created to be seen by human eyes wander in this twilight. Vague forms of antennae, tentacles, fins, open jaws, scales, and claws, float about there, quivering, growing larger, or decomp..
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underwater
victor-hugo
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Victor Hugo |
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f7924e8
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Something more terrible than a hell where one suffers may be imagined, and that is a hell where one is bored.
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boredom
hell
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Victor Hugo |
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c6cca23
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The onward march of the human race requires that the heights around it should be ablaze with noble and enduring lessons of courage. Deeds of daring dazzle history, and form one of the guiding lights of man. The dawn dares when it rises. To strive, to brave all risks, to persist, to persevere, to be faithful to yourself, to grapple hand to hand with destiny, to surprise defeat by the little terror it inspires, at one time to confront unright..
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Victor Hugo |
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9d59ea7
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There is lucidity inspired by the nearness of the grave:to be close to death is to see clearly
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Victor Hugo |
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3e49275
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The scaffold is the accomplice of the executioner; it devours, it eats flesh, it drinks blood; the scaffold is a sort of monster fabricated by the judge and the carpenter, a spectre which seems to live with a horrible vitality composed of all the death which it has inflicted.
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les-misérables
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Victor Hugo |
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981424d
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There exists yonder in the mountains," said the Bishop, "a tiny community no bigger than that, which I have not seen for three years. They are my good friends, those gentle and honest shepherds. They own one goat out of every thirty that they tend. They make very pretty woollen cords of various colors, and they play the mountain airs on little flutes with six holes. They need to be told of the good God now and then. What would they say to a..
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righteousness
courage
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Victor Hugo |
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0024410
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While contemplating the bride, and eyeing the cake of soap, he muttered between his teeth: 'Tuesday. It was not Tuesday. Was it Tuesday? Perhaps it was Tuesday. Yes, it was Tuesday.' No one has ever discovered to what this monologue referred. Yes, perchance, this monologue had some connection with the last occasion on which he had dined, three days before, for it was now Friday.
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Victor Hugo |
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2afc0b7
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any one who had listened to Courfeyrac in 1828 would have thought he heard Tholomyes in 1817. Only, Courfeyrac was an honourable fellow. Beneath the apparent similarities of the exterior mind, the difference between him and Tholomyes was very great. The latent man which existed in the two was totally different in the first from what it was in the second. There was in Tholomyes a district attorney, and in Courfeyrac a paladin.
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Victor Hugo |
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d3f0fee
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Poor old Jean Valjean, of course, loved Cosette only as a father; but, as we noted earlier, into this fatherly love his lonely single status in life had introduced every other kind of love; he loved Cosette as his daughter, and he loved her as his mother, and he loved her as his sister; and, as he had never had either a lover or a wife, as nature is a creditor that does not accept nonpayment, that particular feeling, too, the most indestruc..
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Victor Hugo |
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ed77377
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Hatred becomes, within a given time, the hatred of society, then the hatred of the human race, then the hatred of creation.
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hatred
pessimism
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Victor Hugo |
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a75b910
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The terrible shock of his sentence had in some way broken that wall which separates us from the mystery of things beyond and which we call life.
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wall
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Victor Hugo |
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f22923c
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Citizens, the nineteenth century is grand, but the twentieth century will be happy. Then there will be nothing more like old history. Men will no longer have to fear, as now, a conquest, an invasion, a usurpation, a rivalry of nations with the armed hand, an interruption of civilisation depending on a marriage of kings, a birth in the hereditary tyrannies, a partition of the peoples by a Congress, a dismemberment by the downfall of a dynast..
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Victor Hugo |
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8a92b82
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To travel is to be born and to die at every instant; perhaps, in the vaguest region of his mind, he did make comparisons between the shifting horizon and our human existence: all the things of life are perpetually fleeing before us; the dark and bright intervals are intermingled; after a dazzling moment, an eclipse; we look, we hasten, we stretch out our hands to grasp what is passing; each event is a turn in the road, and, all at once, we ..
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Victor Hugo |
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b2ef61a
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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' ..
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Victor Hugo |
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ee76ff6
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Nothing is small, in fact; any one who is subject to the profound and penetrating influence of nature knows this.
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Victor Hugo |
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01c4700
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Paris, viewed from the towers of Notre Dame in the cool dawn of a summer morning, is a delectable and a magnificent sight; and the Paris of that period must have been eminently so.
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paris
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Victor Hugo |
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da29ec5
|
Man has a tyrant, ignorance. I voted for the demise of that particular tyrant. That particular tyrant has engendered royalty, which is authority based on falsehood, whereas science is authority based on truth. Man should be governed by science alone." "And conscience," added the bishop. "It's the same thing. Conscience is the quota of innate science we each have inside us."
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science
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Victor Hugo |
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9b704e2
|
The glance of women resembles certain combinations of wheels, which are tranquil in appearance yet formidable. You pass close to them every day, peaceably and with impunity, and without a suspicion of anything. A moment arrives when you forget that the thing is there. You go and come, dream, speak, laugh. All at once you feel yourself clutched; all is over. The wheels hold you fast, the glance has ensnared you. It has caught you, no matter ..
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women
wheels
love-at-first-sight
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Victor Hugo |