Quotes from Victor Hugo

The goodness of the mother is written on the gaiety of the child.

It is one of the poignant anxieties of the thinker that he sees the shadow resting on the human soul, and that he gropes in darkness without being able to awaken that slumbering Progress.

All the nuns in the world are not worth as much as one mother in the formation of a young girl's soul.

To be wicked does not insure prosperity.

Man finds prejudices beside his cradle, puts them from him a little in the course of his career, and often, alas! takes to them again in his old age. During this journey in 1825

A priest and a philosopher are two different things

I am not enthusiastic over your Jesus, who preaches renunciation and sacrifice to the last extremity. 'Tis the counsel of an avaricious man to beggars. Renunciation; why? Sacrifice; to what end? I do not see one wolf immolating himself for the happiness of another wolf. Let us stick to nature, then.

The presence of angels is an announcement of Paradise.

Point of departure: matter; point of arrival: the soul.

To love another person is to see the face of God

It sometimes happens that, even contrary to principles, even contrary to liberty, equality, and fraternity, even contrary to the universal vote, even contrary to the government, by all for all, from the depths of its anguish, of its discouragements and its destitutions, of its fevers, of its distresses, of its miasmas, of its ignorances, of its darkness, that great and despairing body, the rabble, protests against, and that the populace wages battle against, the people. Beggars

Revolution cannot really be conquered... If you wish to understand what Revolution is, call it Progress; and if you wish to understand what Progress is, call it Tomorrow. Tomorrow performs its work irresistibly, and it does it from today.