Quotes from Victor Hugo

An inward growth seemed to be in progress within him. He was conscious of a sort of natural enlargement, which gave him two things that were new to him — his father and his country.

To them the idea of man is inseparable from the idea of shade. The night is called sorgue; man, orgue. Man is a derivative of night.

The social edifice of the past rests on three columns,—the priest, the king, and the hangman.

What more do you need? A little garden to walk in, and immensity to reflect on. At his feet something to cultivate and gather; above his head something to study and meditate on; a few flowers on earth and all the stars in heaven.

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved

It is the lineaments of the years which form the countenance of the century.

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.

This is what floats up confusedly, pell-mell, for the year 1817, and is now forgotten. 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. It is of the physiognomy of the years that the physiognomy of the centuries is composed.

Monsieur Mayor," said the bishop, "that is just it. I am not in the world to care for my life, but for souls.

These Parisians came, one from Toulouse, another from Limoges, the third from Cahors, and the fourth from Montauban; but they were students; and when one says student, one says Parisian: to study in Paris is to be born in Paris.

It is sometimes no less startling to meet the dog than the wolf

To divinise is human, to humanise is divine.