Quotes from Victor Hugo

And still I am quite cramped with it all!

Women play with their beauty as children do with a knife. They wound themselves.

As for him, he took the path which shortens,—the Gospel's.

other words, and with a still wider significance, so long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Misérables cannot fail to be of use.

Peoples, like planets, possess the right to an eclipse. And all is well, provided that the light returns and that the eclipse does not degenerate into night.

Winter changes the water of heaven and the heart of man into a stone.

You have suffered greatly, poor mother. Oh ! do not lament, you have now the portion of the elect. It is in this way that mortals become angels. It is not their fault ; they do not know how to set about it otherwise. This hell from which you have come out is the first step towards Heaven. We must begin by that.

The supreme happiness of life consists in the conviction that one is loved; loved for one's own sake... loved in spite of one's self.

He saw nothing of all this. People who are crushed do not look behind them. They know but too well the evil fate which follows them.

God was as visible in this affair as was Jean Valjean. God has his instruments. He makes use of the tool which he wills. He is not responsible to men.

The convict was transfigured into Christ.

God can add nothing to the happiness of those who love, except to give them endless duration.