Quotes from Victor Hugo

If no one loved, the sun would go out.

Though one believes in nothing, there are moments in life when one accepts the religion of the temple nearest at hand.

The fact is that the beautiful, humanly speaking, is merely form considered in its simplest aspect, in its most perfect symmetry, in its most entire harmony with our make-up. Thus the ensemble that it offers us is always complete, but restricted like ourselves. What we call the ugly, on the contrary, is a detail of a great whole which eludes us, and which is in harmony, not with man but with all creation. That is why it constantly presents itself to us in new but incomplete aspects.

Could the word 'iron' be the root from which 'irony' is derived?

Then, turning to his sister: Sister, never a precaution on the part of the priest, against his fellow-man. That which his fellow does, God permits. Let us confine ourselves to prayer, when we think that a danger is approaching us. Let us pray, not for ourselves, but that our brother may not fall into sin on our account.

Our joys have shadows. The perfect smile belongs to God alone.

To attempt, to brave, to persist, and persevere, to be faithful to one's self, to wrestle with destiny, to astound the catastrophe by the slight fear which is causes us, now to confront unjust power, again to insult intoxicated victory, to hold firm and withstand -- such is the example which nations need and the light which electrifies them.

Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has a grander view?

Almost all our desires, when examined, contain something too shameful to reveal.

See Monsieur Geborand, buying a pennyworth of paradise.

and if you fall as Lucifer fell, you fall in flames! And so it must be, for so it is written on the doorway to Paradise, that those who falter and those who fall must pay the price!

All of us, whoever we may be, have our respirable beings. We lack air and we stifle. Then we die. To die for lack of love is horrible. Suffocation of the soul.