Victor Hugo Quotes - Page 7

Well, listen a moment, Monsieur Mayor; I have often been severe in my life towards others. It was just. I did right. Now if I were not severe towards myself, all I have justly done would become injustice. Should I spare myself more than others? No. What! if I should be prompt only to punish others and not myself, I should be a wretched indeed! - Javert to M. Madeleine

People who are overwhelmed with troubles never do look back.They know only too well that misfortune follows in their wake.

What greater flood can there be than the flood of ideas? How quickly they submerge all that they set out to destroy, how rapidly do they create terrifying depths?

Hatred becomes, within a given time, the hatred of society, then the hatred of the human race, then the hatred of creation.

People do not read stupidities with impunity.

To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further, There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.

I had rather be hissed for a good verse than applauded for a bad one.

Happiness lies for those who cry, those who hurt, those who have searched, and those who have tried for only they can appreciate the importance of people who have touched their lives.

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.

Intellectual and moral growth is no less indispensable than material amelioration...If three is anything more poignant than a body agonizing for want of bread, it is a soul dying of hunger for light.

There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.

He did not seek to assume the mantle of Elijah, to shed a light of the future upon the misty turmoil of events or resolve the prevailing light into a single flame; there was in him nothing of the prophet or the mystic. He was a simple soul who loved, and that was all.

A criminal remains a criminal whether he uses a convict's suit or a monarch's crown.

Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent

When your day has been teeming with different sensations, when you have things on your mind, you can get to sleep to start with but you can't get back to sleep. Sleep comes a lot more easily than it comes back.

It is not easy to keep silent when silence is a lie.

When you shall have learned to know, and to love, you will still suffer. The day is born in tears. The luminous weep, if only over those in darkness.