Quotes from Victor Hugo

Genuflection before the idol or the dollar destroys the muscles which walk and the will that moves.

M. Mabeuf's political opinion was a passionate fondness for plants, and a still greater one for books. He had, like everybody else, his termination in ist, without which nobody could have lived in those times, but he was neither a royalist, nor a Bonapartist, nor a chartist, nor an Orleanist, nor an anarchist; he was an old-bookist.

Death belongs to God alone. By what right do men touch that unknown thing?

We say and exclaim within ourselves without breaking silence, in a tumult where everything speaks except our mouths. The realities of the soul are none the less real for being invisible and impalpable.

a compliment is like a kiss through a veil.

What a grand thing it is to be loved! What a far grander thing it is to love! The heart becomes heroic, by dint of passion.

He said, moreover, Teach those who are ignorant as many things as possible; society is culpable, in that it does not afford instruction gratis; it is responsible for the night which it produces. This soul is full of shadow; sin is therein committed. The guilty one is not the person who has committed the sin, but the person who has created the shadow. It will be perceived that he had a peculiar manner of his own of judging things: I suspect that he obtained it from the Gospel.

Where women are honored, the divinities are pleased. Where they are despised, it is useless to pray to God.

Idleness, pleasure, what abysses! To do nothing is a dreary course to take, be sure of it. To live idle upon the substance of society! To be useless, that is to say, noxious! This leads straight to the lowest depth of misery.

Nisi Dominus custodierit domum, in vanum vigilant qui custodiunt eam, Unless the Lord guard the house, in vain do they watch who guard it.

Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing instruction for all and it must answer for the night with it produces. If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness. (Bishop of D)

He was fine; he, that orphan that foundling that outcast; he felt himself august and strong; he looked full in the face that society from which he was banished, and into which he had so powerfully intervened; that human justice from which he had snatched its prey; all those tigers whose jaws perforce remained empty; those myrmidons, those judges, those executioners, all that royal power which he, poor, insignificant being, had foiled with the power of God.