Victor Hugo

“Indigestion is charged by God with enforcing morality on the stomach.”

“Release is not the same as liberation. You get out of jail, all right, but you never stop being condemned.”

“Emergencies have always been necessary to progress. It was darkness which produced the lamp. It was fog that produced the compass. It was hunger that drove us to exploration. And it took a depression to teach us the real value of a job.”

“Mother's arms are made of tenderness, and sweet sleep blesses the child who lies within.”

“Marius and Cosette were in the dark in regard to each other. They did not speak, they did not bow, they were not acquainted; they saw each other; and, like the stars in the sky separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing upon each other.”

“So bring me this man, trembling and shivering from head to foot; let me fall into his arms or down at his knees; he will weep and we shall weep, he will be eloquent and I shall be comforted, and my heart shall melt into his, he will take my soul, and I his God.But what is this kindly old gentleman to me? And what am I to him? Just one more member of the race of unfortunates, one more shade to go with the many he has seen, one more figure to add to his total of executions.”

“What Shakespeare was able to do in English he would certainly not have done in French.”

“Un sceptique qui adhère à un croyant cela est simple comme la loi des couleurs complémentaires.Ce qui nous manque nous attire.”

“We do not claim that the portrait we are making is the whole truth, only that it is a resemblance.”

“To commit the least possible sin is the law for man. To live without sin is the dream of an angel. Everything terrestrial is subject to sin. Sin is a gravitation.”

“Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause.”

“Wisdom is a sacred communion.”

“A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in--what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.”

“The wicked envy and hate; it is their way of admiring.”

“The little people must be sacred to the big ones, and it is from the rights of the weak that the duty of the strong is comprised.”

“Dream no small dreams. They have no power to stir the hearts of men.”

“The word is the Verb, and the Verb is God.”

“Melancholy is the happiness of being sad.”

“Wide horizons lead the soul to broad ideas; circumscribed horizons engender narrow ideas; this sometimes condemns great hearts to become small minded.Broad ideas hated by narrow ideas,—this is the very struggle of progress.”

“It is a mournful task to break the sombre attachments of the past.”