Victor Hugo

"Winter changes into stone the water of heaven and the heart of man."

"“The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.”"

"“What Is Love? I have met in the streets a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul”"

"What a grand thing, to be loved! What a grander thing still, to love!"

"Where are your free and compulsory schools? Does every one know how to read in the land of Dante and of Michael Angelo? Have you made public schools of your barracks? Have you not, like ourselves, an opulent war-budget and a paltry budget of education? Have not you also that passive obedience which is so easily converted into soldierly obedience? military establishment which pushes the regulations to the extreme of firing upon Garibaldi; that is to say, upon the living honor of Italy? Let us subject your social order to examination, let us take it where it stands and as it stands, let us view its flagrant offences, show me the woman and the child. It is by the amount of protection with which these two feeble creatures are surrounded that the degree of civilization is to be measured. Is prostitution less heartrending in Naples than in Paris? What is the amount of justice springs from your tribunals? Do you chance to be so fortunate as to be ignorant of the meaning of those gloomy words: public prosecution, legal infamy, prison, the scaffold, the executioner, the death penalty? Italians, with you as with us, Beccaria is dead and Farinace is alive. And then, let us scrutinize your state reasons. Have you a government which comprehends the identity of morality and politics? You have reached the point where you grant amnesty to heroes! Something very similar has been done in France. Stay, let us pass miseries in review, let each one contribute in his pile, you are as rich as we. Have you not, like ourselves, two condemnations, religious condemnation pronounced by the priest, and social condemnation decreed by the judge? Oh, great nation of Italy, thou resemblest the great nation of France! Alas! our brothers, you are, like ourselves, Misérables."

"She had had sweet dreams, which possibly arose from teh fact that her little bed was very white."

"Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face."

"You were right to come to see a dying man. It is right that these moments should have witnesses. Everyone has his dream; I would like to live till dawn, but I know I have less than three hours left. It will be night, but no matter. Dying is simple. It does not take daylight. So be it: I will die by starlight"

"There are moments when a rope's end, a pole, the branch of the tree, is life itself, and it is a frightful thing to see a living being lose his hold upon it, and fall like a ripe fruit."

"God will reward you,' he said. 'You must be an angel since you care for flowers."

"For a person's nature,like a rock,can be drilled into by drops of water. For a person's nature,like a rock,can be drilled into by drops of water. For a person's nature,like a rock,can be drilled into by drops of water. For a person's nature,like a rock,can be drilled into by drops of water."

"No one is a good historian of the patent, visible, striking, and public life of peoples, if he is not, at the same time, in a certain measure, the historian of their deep and hidden life; and no one is a good historian of the interior unless he understands how, at need, to be the historian of the exterior also... True history being a mixture of all things, the true historian mingles in everything."

"At the side of Enjolras, who represented the logic of revolution, was Combeferre, representing its philosophy. The difference between logic and philosophy is that one can decide upon war, whereas the other can only be fulfilled by peace."

"Si l'on n'est plus que mille, eh bien, j'en suis ! Si même Ils ne sont plus que cent, je brave encor Sylla ;S'il en demeure dix, je serai le dixième ;Et s'il n'en reste qu'un, je serai celui-là !(If we're just a thousand, then, here I am! Even if They're just a hundred, still I face Sylla;If ten still stand, I'll be the tenth;And if there is only one left, I'll be this one!)"

"No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come."

"One day of happiness is worth more than a lifetime of sorrow ... Under ordinary circumstances, jealousy is a suspicion to the person who excites it and degrading to the person who indulges it."

"It is wrong to become absorbed in the divine law to such a degree as not to perceive human law. Death belongs to God alone. By what right do men touch that unknown thing?"

"It is fathomless, since it is God. One flings into that well the labor of one's whole life, one flings in one's fortune, one flings in one's riches, one flings in one's success, one flings in one's liberty or fatherland, one flings in one's well-being, one flings in one's repose, one flings in one's joy! More! more! more! Empty the vase! tip the urn! One must finish by flinging in one's heart."

"How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said."

"Perseverance, secret of all triumphs."