Quotes from Victor Hugo

England has two books, one which she has made and one which has made her: Shakespeare and the Bible.

Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers.

A creditor is worse than a slave-owner; for the master owns only your person, but a creditor owns your dignity, and can command it.

If suffer we must, let's suffer on the heights.

What would be ugly in a garden constitutes beauty in a mountain.

It seemed to be a necessary ritual that he should prepare himself for sleep by meditating under the solemnity of the night sky... a mysterious transaction between the infinity of the soul and the infinity of the universe.

In winter there is no heat, no light, no noon, evening touches morning, there is fog, and mist, the window is frosted, and you cannot see clearly. The sky is but the mouth of a cave. The whole day is the cave.... Frightful season! Winter changes into stone the water of heaven and the heart of man.

Jesus wept Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization.

A mother's arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them.

Amnesty is as good for those who give it as for those who receive it. It has the admirable quality of bestowing mercy on both sides.

The three great problems of this century the degradation of man in the proletariat, the subjection of women through hunger, the atrophy of the child by darkness.

One is not idle because one is absorbed. There is both visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil, to think is to do. The crossed arms work, the clasped hands act. The eyes upturned to Heaven are an act of creation.