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d6219a8
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When a man understands the art of seeing, he can trace the spirit of an age and the features of a king even in the knocker on a door.
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Victor Hugo |
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da73751
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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.
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Victor Hugo |
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d97f60d
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History has its truth, and so has legend. Legendary truth is of another nature than historical truth. Legendary truth is invention whose result is reality. Furthermore, history and legend have the same goal; to depict eternal man beneath momentary man.
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history
on-fiction
legends
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Victor Hugo |
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d4f2de9
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To be a saint is the exception; to be a just person is the rule. Err, stumble, commit sin, but be one of the just.
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Victor Hugo |
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a98b630
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The reduction of the universe to the compass of a single being, and the extension of a single being until it reaches God - that is love. Love is the salute of the angels to the stars.
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Victor Hugo |
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02d7527
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Il dort. Quoique le sort fut pour lui bien etrange, Il vivait. Il mourut quand il n'eut plus son ange. La chose simplement d'elle-meme arriva, Comme la nuit se fait lorsque le four s'en va.
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Victor Hugo |
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ed67801
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There is always a patch of blue sky to lovers, although the rest of the world may see nothing but their umbrellas.
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love
victor-hugo
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Victor Hugo |
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f13595c
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I would rather be the head of a fly than the tail of a lion.
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Victor Hugo |
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4c570f6
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If you ask the great city, 'Who is this person?,' she will answer, 'He is my child.
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paris
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Victor Hugo |
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adad98e
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All the human and animal manure which the world wastes, if returned to the land, instead of being thrown into the sea, would suffice to nourish the world.
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sustainability
recycling
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Victor Hugo |
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14ac6b8
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Marius was of the temperament that sinks into grief and remains there; Cosette was of the sort that plunges in and comes out again.
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Victor Hugo |
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8bb9bfc
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One might almost say that affinities begin with the letters of the alphabet. In that sequence, O and P are inseparable. You might just as well say O and P as Orestes and Pylades. A true satellite of Enjolras, Grantaire lived within this circle of young men. He dwelt among them, only with them was he happy, he followed them everywhere. His pleasure was to watch these figures come and go in a wine-induced haze. They put up with him because o..
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love
grantaire
devotion
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Victor Hugo |
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6ebbc30
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There are plenty who regard a wall behind which something is happening as a very curious thing.
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Victor Hugo |
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dffe975
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Il dort. Quoique le sort fut pour lui bien etrange, Il vivait. Il mourut quand il n'eut plus son ange. La choise simplement d'elle-meme arriva. Comme la nuit se fait lorsque le jour s'en va. He is asleep. Though his mettle was sorely tried, He lived, and when he lost his angel, died. It happened calmly, on its own. The way night comes when day is done.
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Victor Hugo |
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473d4af
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Go on philosophers--teach, enlighten, kindle, think aloud, speak up, run joyfully toward broad daylight, fraternize in the public squares, announce the glad tidings, lavish your alphabets, proclaim human rights, sing your Marseillaises, sow enthusiasms, 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 conflagration of principles and virtues, ..
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Victor Hugo |
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a791552
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Among all these passionate hearts and all these undoubting minds there was one skeptic. How did he happen to be there? From juxtaposition. The name of this skeptic was Grantaire, and he usually signed with this rebus: R. Grantaire was a man who took good care not to believe in anything.
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les-amis
les-amis-d-abc
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Victor Hugo |
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d68b766
|
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-p..
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labor
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Victor Hugo |
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0c97ac4
|
When the heart is dry the eye is dry.
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philosophy
tears
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Victor Hugo |
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059f06e
|
Can human nature ever be wholly and radically transformed? Can the man whom God made good be made wicked by man? Can the soul be reshaped in its entirety by destiny and made evil because destiny is evil? Can the heart become misshapen and afflicted with ugly, incurable deformities under disproportionate misfortune, like a spinal column bent beneath a too low roof?
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Victor Hugo |
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1a70b05
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For love is like a tree; it grows of itself; it send its roots deep into our being, and often continues to grow green over a heart in ruins.
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Victor Hugo |
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a5fd0f8
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He found that man needs affection, that life without a warming love is but a dry wheel, creaking and grating as it turns.
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Victor Hugo |
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1fb729f
|
A phenomenon often seen. A sceptic adhering to a believer; that is as simple as the law of the complementary colours. What we lack attracts us. Nobody loves the light like the blind man...
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Victor Hugo |
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ced26a1
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Do you hear the people sing? Singing a song of angry men
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musical
revolution
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Victor Hugo |
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4cd0c75
|
Success is a very hideous thing. Its false resemblance to merit deceives men.
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Victor Hugo |
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8463e7d
|
Reality in strong doses frightens.
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Victor Hugo |
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d9b7bbf
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It so happens that this is particular love was precisely the sort best suited to the state of her soul. It was a sort of remote worship, a mute contemplation, a deification by an unknown votary. It was the apprehension of adolescence by adolescence, her dreams becoming romance ad remain in dream, the wished-for phantom realized at last and made flash, but still without name or wrong or fault, or need, or defect; in a word, a lover distant a..
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Victor Hugo |
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51e108d
|
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..
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Victor Hugo |
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2218884
|
From a political point of view, there is but one principle, the sovereignty of man over himself. This sovereignty of myself over myself is called Liberty
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Victor Hugo |
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554580e
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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.
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law
vengeance
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Victor Hugo |
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219e712
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There is, we are aware, a philosophy that denies the infinite. There is also a philosophy, classified as pathologic, that denies the sun; this philosophy is called blindness. To set up a theory that lacks a source of truth is an excellent example of blind assurance. And the odd part of it is the haughty air of superiority and compassion assumed toward the philosophy that sees God, by this philosophy that has to grope its way. It makes one t..
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Victor Hugo |
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4511202
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Cosette was not very timid by nature. There flowed in her veins some of the blood of the bohemian and the adventuress who runs barefoot. It will be remembered that she was more of a lark than a dove. There was a foundation of wildness and bravery in her
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les-mis
|
Victor Hugo |
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8539354
|
That men saw his mask, but the bishop saw his face. That men saw his life, but the bishop saw his conscience.
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Victor Hugo |
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3ccfc3b
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A shadow is hard to seize by the throat and dash to the ground.
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struggle
life
phantom
shadow
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Victor Hugo |
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c9c2a85
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Nothing can be sadder or more profound than to see a thousand things for the first and last time.
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Victor Hugo |
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9a69f36
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This barricade is made neither of paving stones, nor of timbers, nor of iron; it is made of two mounds, a mound of ideas and a mound of sorrows. Here misery encounters the ideal. Here the day embraces the night, and says: I will die with you and you will be born again with me.
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enjolras
les-amis-d-abc
|
Victor Hugo |
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5973969
|
The merciful precepts of Christ will at last suffuse the Code and it will glow with their radiance. Crime will be considered an illness with its own doctors to replace your judges and its hospitals to replace your prisons. Liberty shall be equated with health. Ointments and oil shall be applied to limbs that were once shackled and branded. Infirmities that once were scourged with anger shall now be bathed with love. The cross in place of th..
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illness
love
gallows
judges
the-last-day-of-a-condemned-man
prisons
cross
hospitals
crime
victor-hugo
|
Victor Hugo |
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850d0a4
|
Joie est mon caractere, C'est la faute a Voltaire; Misere est mon trousseau C'est la faute a Rousseau. [Joy is my character, 'Tis the fault of Voltaire; Misery is my trousseau
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rousseau
voltaire
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Victor Hugo |
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0833929
|
Night and the day, when united, Bring forth the beautiful light.
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Victor Hugo |
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93607c3
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Books are cold but safe friends
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Victor Hugo |
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945f96a
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Though we chisel away as best we can at the mysterious block from which our life is made, the black vein of destiny continually reappears.
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Victor Hugo |
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71a8f6a
|
A benevolent malefactor, merciful, gentle, helpful, clement, a convict, returning good for evil, giving back pardon for hatred, preferring pity to vengeance, preferring to ruin himself rather than to ruin his enemy, saving him who had smitten him, kneeling on the heights of virtue, more nearly akin to an angel than to a man. Javert was constrained to admit to himself that this monster existed. Things could not go on in this manner.
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Victor Hugo |
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9b6dd2a
|
A certain amount of reverie is good, like a narcotic in discreet doses. It soothes the fever, occasionally high, of the brain at work, and produces in the mind a soft, fresh vapor that corrects the all too angular contours of pure thought, fills up the gaps and intervals here and there, binds them together, and dulls the sharp corners of ideas. But too much reverie submerges and drowns. Thought is the labor of the intellect, reverie it's pl..
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reverie
intellect
thought
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Victor Hugo |
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c345d97
|
I advance in life, I grow more simple, and I become more and more patriotic for humanity.
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human-rights
humanity
simplicity
patriotism
|
Victor Hugo |
|
bce2826
|
God manifests himself to us in the first degree through the life of the universe, and in the second degree through the thought of man. The second manifestation is not less holy than the first. The first is named Nature, the second is named Art.
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inspirational-success-failure
victor
capital-punishment
paris
|
Victor Hugo |