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8f9339b
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The obstinacy of antiquated institutions in perpetuating themselves resembles the stubbornness of the rancid perfume which should claim our hair, the pretensions of the spoiled fish which should persist in being eaten, the persecution of the child's garment which should insist on clothing the man, the tenderness of corpses which should return to embrace the living. "Ingrates!" says the garment, "I protected you in inclement weather. Why wil..
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Victor Hugo |
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14431af
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And, moreover, when it happens that both are sincere and good, nothing will mix and amalgamate more easily than an old priest and an old soldier. In reality, they are the same kind of man. One has devoted himself to country upon earth, the other to his country in heaven; there is no other difference.
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Victor Hugo |
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fc4fe95
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Notre-Dame de Paris is, in particular, a curious specimen of this variety. Each face, each stone of the venerable monument, is a page not only of the history of the country, but of the history of science and art as well.
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Victor Hugo |
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9bf51c3
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knt qdran `l~ ltfkyr fy kl m ysrny , l'ny kntu Hran
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الحرية
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Victor Hugo |
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d82860e
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We live in the midst of a gloomy society. Success; that is the lesson which falls drop by drop from the slope of corruption. Be it said in passing, that success is a very hideous thing. Its false resemblance to merit deceives men. For the masses, success has almost the same profile as supremacy. Success, that Menaechmus of talent, has one dupe,--history.
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Victor Hugo |
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99ffe43
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As we have explained, in first love the soul is taken long before the body; later, the body is taken long before the soul; sometimes the soul is not taken at all.
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Victor Hugo |
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fe78919
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A chair is not a caste.
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Victor Hugo |
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2625f96
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winter always carries with it something of our sadness; then April came, that daybreak of summer, fresh like every dawn, gay like every childhood; weeping a little sometimes like the infant that it is. Nature in this month has charming gleams which pass from the sky, the clouds, the trees, the fields, and the flowers, into the heart of man.
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Victor Hugo |
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47cb9e5
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One becomes gradually accustomed to poison.
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Victor Hugo |
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946f258
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In saying no to progress, it is not the future which they condemn, but themselves. They give themselves a melancholy disease; they inoculate themselves with the past. There is but one way of refusing tomorrow, that is to die.
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Victor Hugo |
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75d0b32
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You ask me what forces me to speak? a strange thing; my conscience. . . . You ask why I speak? I am neither informed against, nor pursued, nor hunted, say you. Yes! I am informed against! yes! I am pursued! yes! I am hunted! By whom? by myself. It is I myself who bar the way before myself, and I drag myself, and I urge myself, and I check myself and I exert myself, and when one holds himself he is well held.
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Victor Hugo |
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d476f52
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Then live your life, above all things. Make use of your I while you have it.
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Victor Hugo |
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55b938d
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She had had sweet dreams, which possibly arose from the fact that her little bed was very white.
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Victor Hugo |
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8af5949
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Proceed, philosophers, teach, enlighten, enkindle, think aloud, speak aloud, run joyously towards the bright daylight, fraternise in the public squares, announce the glad tidings, scatter plenteously your alphabets, proclaim human rights, sing your Marseillaises, sow enthusiasms, broadcast, tear off green branches from the oak trees. Make thought a whirlwind. This multitude can be sublimated. Let us learn to avail ourselves of this vast com..
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Victor Hugo |
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a5b02ca
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Man is at the mercy of events. Life is a perpetual succession of events, and we must submit to it. We never know from what quarter the sudden blow of chance will come. Catastrophe and good fortune come upon us and then depart, like unexpected visitors. They have their own laws, their own orbits, their own gravitational force, all independent of man.
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Victor Hugo |
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1380742
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Could the word 'iron' be the root from which 'irony' is derived?
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Victor Hugo |
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6104790
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Then, turning to his sister: "Sister, never a precaution on the part of the priest, against his fellow-man. That which his fellow does, God permits. Let us confine ourselves to prayer, when we think that a danger is approaching us. Let us pray, not for ourselves, but that our brother may not fall into sin on our account."
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Victor Hugo |
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5bb34b1
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It is like a skull, which still has holes for eyes, but no longer sight.
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Victor Hugo |
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9e8badd
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n lHy@ lt~ tkhlw mn l`Tf@ lyst Gyr Hrk@ jf@ Srkh@ mmzq@
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Victor Hugo |
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bdc5bd3
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That night, before going to bed, he went on to say, 'Never be afraid of thieves and murderers. They represent the dangers without, which are not worth worrying about. Be afraid of ourselves. Prejudices are the real thieves, vices are the murderers. The greatest dangers are within us. Who cares who threatens our heads or our purses! Let's think only of what threatens our souls.
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Victor Hugo |
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d742476
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From Les Miserables: All at once, in the midst of this profound calm, a fresh sound arose; a sound as celestial, divine, ineffable, ravishing, as the other had been horrible. It was a hymn which issued from the gloom, a dazzling burst of prayer and harmony in the obscure and alarming silence of the night; women's voices, but voices composed at one and the same time of the pure accents of virgins and the innocent accent of children, -- voice..
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prayer
hope
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Victor Hugo |
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3ad063e
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It's not enough to abolish abuse; custom must also be transformed. The mill was pulled down, but the wind still blows.
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Victor Hugo |
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5094516
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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?
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Victor Hugo |
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4e78022
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You who are Prejudice, Abuse, Ignominy, Oppression, Iniquity, Despotism, Injustice, Fanaticism, beware of the wide-eyed urchin. He will grow up.
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Victor Hugo |
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bde6804
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As for us, we respect the past here and there, and we spare it, above all, provided that it consents to be dead. If it insists on being alive, we attack it, and we try to kill it.
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past
stagnation
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Victor Hugo |
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eacebd6
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It was all over with him. Marius loved a woman. His destiny was entering upon the unknown.
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Victor Hugo |
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4269491
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The guillotine is the ultimate expression of Law, and its name is vengeance; it is not neutral, nor does it allow us to remain neutral. All social questions achieve their finality around that blade. The scaffold is an image. It is not merely a framework, a machine, a lifeless mechanism of wood, iron, and rope. It is as though it were a being having its own dark purpose, as though the framework saw, the machine listened, and the mechanism un..
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scaffold
executioner
execution
france
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Victor Hugo |
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a23cc7c
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So struggled beneath its anguish this unhappy soul. Eighteen hundred years before this unfortunate man, the mysterious Being, in whom are aggregated all the sanctities and all the sufferings of humanity, He also, while the olive trees were shivering in the fierce breathe of the Infinite, had long put away from his hand the fearful chalice that appeared before him, dripping with shadow and running over with darkness, in the star-filled depth..
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Victor Hugo |
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93b1d6a
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First of all, I wish you love, and that by loving you may also be loved.
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love
unrequited-love
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Victor Hugo |
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4354837
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Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are done, we recognize one thing: that the human race has been badly manhandled, but that it has moved forward.
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revolution
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Victor Hugo |
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656c904
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How do we know that the creation of worlds is not determined by the fall of grains of sand? Who knows the reciprocal ebb and flow of the infinitely great and the infinitely little, the reverberations of causes in the precipices of being, and the avalanches of creation? The tiniest worm is of importance; the great is little, the little is great; everything is balanced in necessity; alarming vision for the mind. There are marvelous relations ..
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Victor Hugo |
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a03d6da
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The soul falls into contemplation before this sanctuary, where the celebration of love is held.
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Victor Hugo |
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83d43b5
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It is nothing to die; it is horrible not to live.
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Victor Hugo |
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5b474df
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He never went out without a book under his arm and he often came home with two.
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Victor Hugo |
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4cea09c
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L'istinto di Cosette cercava un padre, come quello di Valjean cercava un figlio, e incontrarsi, per essi, significo trovarsi; nel momento misterioso in cui le loro mani s'incontrarono, si saldarono. Quando quelle due anime si scorsero, riconobbero di essere ciascuna quel che abbisognava all'altra e s'abbracciarono strettamente.
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i-miserabili
italiano
les-misérables
victor-hugo
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Victor Hugo |
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3119cdc
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Memory is a gulf that a word can move to its lowest depths.
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Victor Hugo |
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802621d
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So long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless.
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reading
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Victor Hugo |
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3b8004c
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Le coeur se sature d'amour comme d'un sel divin qui le conserve; de la l'incorruptible adherence de ceux qui se sont aimes des l'aube de la vie, et la fraicheur des vielles amours prolonges. Il existe un embaumement d'amour. C'est de Daphnis et Chloe que sont faits Philemon et Baucis. Cette vieillesse la, ressemblance du soir avec l'aurore. The heart is saturated with love as if with a divine salt which preserves it; that is what makes poss..
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Victor Hugo |
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e196658
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Nothing on the horizon; nothing in heaven. He implores the expanse, the waves, the seaweed, the reef; they are deaf. He beseeches the tempest; the imperturbable tempest obeys only the infinite. Around him darkness, fog, solitude, the stormy and non- sentient tumult, the undefined curling of those wild waters. In him horror and fatigue. Beneath him the depths. Not a point of support. He thinks of the gloomy adventures of the corpse in the li..
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Victor Hugo |
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f26669e
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What was he doing during the trip? What was he thinking about? As he had during the morning, he watched the trees go by, the thatched roofs, the cultivated fields, and the dissolving views of the countryside that change at every turn of the road. Scenes like that are sometimes enough for the soul, and almost eliminate the need for thought. To see a thousand objects for the first and last time, what could be more profoundly melancholy? Trave..
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Victor Hugo |
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ac82582
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Citizens, the nineteenth century is great, but the twentieth century will be happy. Then, there will be nothing more like the history of old, we shall no longer, as to-day, have to fear a conquest, an invasion, a usurpation, a rivalry of nations, arms in hand, an interruption of civilization depending on a marriage of kings, on a birth in hereditary tyrannies, a partition of peoples by a congress, a dismemberment because of the failure of a..
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Victor Hugo |
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00e3e2e
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The poor young man must work for his bread; he eats; when he has eaten, he has nothing left but reverie. He enters God's theater free; he sees the sky, space, the stars, the flowers, the children, the humanity in which he suffers, the creation in which he shines. He looks at humanity so much that he sees the soul, he looks at creation so much that he sees God. He dreams, he feels that he is great; he dreams some more, and he feels that he i..
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poverty
suffering
nature
humanity
god
reverie
contemplation
poor
soul
creation
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Victor Hugo |
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dd5817c
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Great edifices, like great mountains, are the work of the ages.
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Victor Hugo |
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49d601f
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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..
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Victor Hugo |