Quotes from Victor Hugo

Indigestion is charged by God with enforcing morality on the stomach.

Live and Let live To love someone is to see the face of God

What was it but a figure of darkness whose sole care had been to safeguard the rising of a star. And that was Jean Valjean's secret.

Do what you will, you cannot annihilate that eternal relic in the heart of man, love.

In this nineteenth century, the religious idea is undergoing a crisis. People are unlearning certain things, and they do well, provided that, while unlearning them they learn this: There is no vacuum in the human heart. Certain

History neglects nearly all these particulars, and cannot do otherwise; the infinity would overwhelm it. Nevertheless, these details, which are wrongly called trivial,—there are no trivial facts in humanity, nor little leaves in vegetation,—are useful.

Is it not the best pity, when a man has a sore point, not to touch it at all?

The most ferocious animals are disarmed by caresses to their young

Biassou raised his hand, and as if by enchantment the tumult was stilled, and each negro returned to his place in the ranks in silence. The discipline which Biassou had imposed upon his equals by the exercise of his power of will struck me, I may say, with admiration. All the soldiers of the force seemed to exist only to obey the wishes of their chief, as the notes of the harpsichord under the fingers of the musician.

had it been given to our eyes of the flesh to gaze into the consciences of others, we should be able to judge a man much more surely according to what he dreams, than according to what he thinks.

There occurred, infamous to relate, inundations of the sewer. At times, that stomach of civilization digested badly, the cess-pool flowed back into the throat of the city, and Paris got an after-taste of her own filth. These resemblances of the sewer to remorse had their good points; they were warnings; very badly accepted, however; the city waxed indignant at the audacity of its mire, and did not admit that the filth should return. Drive it out better.

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves — say rather, loved in spite of ourselves.