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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 35dea6a | Thou art free! | Victor Hugo | ||
| ecf5c06 | When they saw him making money, they said, "He is a man of business." When they saw him scattering his money about, they said, "He is an ambitious man." When he was seen to decline honors, they said, "He is an adventurer." When they saw him repulse society, they said, "He is a brute." | Victor Hugo | ||
| 1de96b1 | In these creations, life and symbolic value are not in contradiction: they intensify each other. | Victor Hugo | ||
| ddcd4c5 | On the contrary, as there is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher, everything was given away, so to speak, before it was received, like water on thirsty soil; it was well that money came to him, for he never kept any, and besides he robbed himself. | Victor Hugo | ||
| fbdbe15 | Good! And what if you should happen to cough or to sneeze?" "A man who is making his escape does not cough or sneeze." | Victor Hugo | ||
| 0a1019a | A reflection from this heaven shone upon the bishop. But it was also a luminous transparency, for this heaven was within him: this heaven was his conscience. | Victor Hugo | ||
| 8010e29 | The moral world has no greater spectacle than this: a troubled and restless conscience on the verge of committing an evil deed, contemplating the sleep of a good man. | Victor Hugo | ||
| 26d103d | they no longer had any hope, but they had despair. Despair is a last weapon that sometimes brings victory; Virgil said so. | Victor Hugo | ||
| 363fe62 | How was Jean Valjean going to conduct himself in the face of Cosette and Marius's happiness? A happiness he himself had wanted, that he himself had made; he was the one who had stabbed himself in the guts with it, and, at this moment, looking back on it, he could feel the sort of satisfaction an armorer would have felt, recognizing his trademark on a blade as he yanked it, all fuming, out of his chest. | Victor Hugo | ||
| f2e7cbc | The driver, a black silhouette upon his box, whipped up his bony horses. Icy silence in the coach. Marius, motionless, his body braced in the corner of the carriage, his head dropping down upon his breast, his arms hanging, his legs rigid, appeared to await nothing now but a coffin; Jean Valjean seemed made of shadow, and Javert of stone. | despair intriguing | Victor Hugo | |
| 18c9ab1 | In becoming dirt, she has been turned to stone. To touch her is to feel a chill. | Victor Hugo | ||
| b9f9e16 | To fall into it again in appearance was to leave it behind in reality! He had to do it! He would have done nothing if he didn't do that! His whole life would have been useless, all his penitence wasted, and there would be only one thing left to say: What is the point? | Victor Hugo | ||
| ef7789c | exquisite--such was Fantine; and beneath these feminine adornments and these ribbons one could divine a statue, and in that statue a soul. | Victor Hugo | ||
| 8fa089a | Suddenly she let fly with this: "It's nice here!" It was a ghastly dump, but she felt free." | Victor Hugo | ||
| df31d53 | Ignominy thirsts for respect. | Victor Hugo | ||
| 0508763 | your name is My Brother. | Victor Hugo | ||
| ffa343b | he never was known to have a sweetheart; he had not time to be in love. | Victor Hugo | ||
| 991d67e | To love or have loved is enough. Don't ask for anything more. There is no other pearl to be found in the shadowy folds of life. To love is an achievement. | Victor Hugo | ||
| f245be8 | in our civilization there are fearful hours - such are those when the criminal law pronounces shipwreck upon a man. What a mournful moment is that in which society withdraws itself and gives up a thinking being forever. | Victor Hugo | ||
| 3252357 | It is sad to tell, but after having tried society, which had caused his misfortune, he tried Providence which created society, and condemned it also. | Victor Hugo | ||
| 67c9b97 | What dangers you run, O noble souls! Often, you give your heart, but we take only your body. Your heart is left to you and you look at it in the shadows and shudder. | Victor Hugo | ||
| 480bf2b | What are the convulsions of a city compared to the emeutes of the soul? Man is a depth still more profound than the people. | Victor Hugo | ||
| d275d1a | 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. | Victor Hugo | ||
| 2181734 | You have to be used to the twists of fate and being caught up in them to dare lift your eyes when certain questions appear in all their horrible starkness. Good or evil are behind the stern question mark. What are you going to do? asks the Sphinx. The habit of undergoing trials by fire is one Jean Valjean had acquired. He looked the sphinx full in the face. He examined the merciless problem from every angle. | Victor Hugo | ||
| 58de599 | We are never done, then, with conscience. Make up your mind what to do with it, Brutus; make up your mind what to do with it, Cato. It is without end, being God. We throw into this bottomless pit a lifetime of labor, we throw into it our fortune, we throw into it our success, we throw into it our liberty or our country, we throw into it our well-being, we throw into it our repose, we throw into it our joy. More! More! More! Empty the vessel.. | Victor Hugo | ||
| 6c3c373 | Was it possible that Napoleon should have won that battle? We answer No. Why? Because of Wellington? Because of Blucher? No. Because of God. | Victor Hugo | ||
| a097529 | Pierce through the livid face of a human being at certain moments as they ponder, look behind the facade, look into the soul, look into the darkness. There, beneath the outer silence, titanic struggles are taking place. What a somber thing is this infinity that each man carries within him and against which he measures in despair what his his brain wants and what his life puts into action! | Victor Hugo | ||
| 31ac4b1 | Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over, this is recognized: that the human race has been harshly treated, but that it has advanced. | Victor Hugo | ||
| ef6ec07 | Nothing supplies the place of this instinct. All the nuns in the world are not worth as much as one mother in the formation of a young girl's soul. | Victor Hugo | ||
| e51d8d5 | V'e uno spettacolo piu grande del mare, ed e il cielo; v'e uno spettacolo piu grande del cielo, ed e l'interno dell'anima. Far il poema della coscienza umana, foss'anco d'un sol uomo, del piu infimo fra gli uomini, sarebbe come fondere tutte le epopee in un'epopea superiore e definitiva. La coscienza e il caos delle chimere, delle cupidigie e dei tentativi, la fornace dei sogni, l'antro delle idee di cui si ha vergogna; e il pandemonio dei .. | Victor Hugo | ||
| 1b55cdb | It is immoral that a mattress should have so much power. Triumph of that which yields over that which strikes with lightning. But never mind, glory to the mattress which annuls a cannon! | Victor Hugo | ||
| d197e3e | Everyday he saw better, and he began to climb slowly, one by one, almost reluctantly at first then, with intoxication and, as though drawn by an irresistible fascination, steps that started off dark, then gradually became dimly illuminated, only to end in the luminous and splendid blaze of enthusiasm. | Victor Hugo | ||
| 62c1d48 | owing money was the beginning of slavery ..... a creditor was worse than a boss, for a boss only owns your person but a creditor owns your dignity and can slap it around. | Victor Hugo | ||
| 8397944 | When all was said, his fate, however ugly it might prove to be, was in his own hands; he was its master. | Victor Hugo | ||
| 9e215af | 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? | Victor Hugo | ||
| 130e98a | Each of our passions, even love, has a stomach that must not be overloaded. We must in all things write the word finis in time; we must restrain ourselves, when it becomes urgent, draw the bolt on the appetite, play a fantasia on the violin, then break the strings with our own hand. | Victor Hugo | ||
| 0683528 | To see nothing of a person makes it possible to credit him with all the perfection. | Victor Hugo | ||
| 8c64041 | 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. | Victor Hugo | ||
| c06264c | Aures habet, et non audiet. | Victor Hugo | ||
| 3edd1ba | Abstruse speculations contain vertigo. | Victor Hugo | ||
| cd7fd85 | He fell to the seat, she by his side. There no more words. The stars were beginning to shine. How was it that their lips met? How is it that the birds sing, the the snow melts, that the rose opens, that May blooms, that the dawn whitens behind the black trees on the shivering summit of the hills? | nature | Victor Hugo | |
| e4178c6 | He had, like everyone else, his suffix ist, without which nobody could have lived in those days, but he was neither a royalist, nor a Bonapartist, nor a chartist, nor an Orleanist, nor an anarchist; he was an old-bookist. | Victor Hugo | ||
| b73f504 | It was a garbage heap, and it was Sinai. | Victor Hugo | ||
| f33cc03 | Those who have succeeded in procuring this admirable materialism have the joy of feeling themselves irresponsible, and of thinking that they can devour everything without uneasiness,--places, sinecures, dignities, power, whether well or ill acquired, lucrative recantations, useful treacheries, savory capitulations of conscience,--and that they shall enter the tomb with their digestion accomplished. | Victor Hugo |