Quotes from Victor Hugo

The utmost extremity of degradation is the obscene merriment to which it gives rise.

He set out for Toulon. He arrived there, after a journey of twenty-seven days, on a cart, with a chain on his neck. At Toulon he was clothed in the red cassock. All that had constituted his life, even to his name, was effaced; he was no longer even Jean Valjean; he was number 24,601.

To subdue matter is the first step; to realize the ideal is the second.

The slashers have finished; it was the turn of the thinkers. The century that Waterloo was intended to arrest has pursued its march. That sinister victory was vanquished by liberty.

When one is at the end of one's life, to die means to go away; when one is at the beginning of it, to go away means to die.

In the case of sand as in that of woman, there is a fineness which is treacherous.

He was full of sly caution and clumsy recklessness. He

Death belongs only to God. What right have men to lay hands on a thing so unknown?

There is one thing sadder than to see one's children die; it is to see them leading an evil life.

When both are sincere and good, no men so penetrate each other, and so amalgamate with each other, as an old priest and an old soldier. At bottom, the man is the same. The one has devoted his life to his country here below, the other to his country on high; that is the only difference.

All the birds that fly hold the thread of infinity in their claws. Germination

The primitive races of mankind were terrified by the hydra that flew upon the water, by the dragon that belched fire, by the griffin, that aerial monster with wings on an eagle and a tiger's claws — fearful creatures beyond the control of men. But man sets his traps, the miraculous traps conceived by human intelligence, and in the end he captured them.