Happiness and despair do not breathe the same air. A man in despair participates in the life of others from a great distance; he is almost unaware of their presence; he has lost any consciousness of his own existence; he is a thing of flesh and blood but feels that he is no longer real; he sees himself only as a dream.

— Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo Quotes

She had already suffered so much that she reflected with the lugubrious air of an old woman.

— Victor Hugo

The Unknown sometimes holds surprises for the spirit of man. A sudden rent in the veil of darkness will momentarily reveal the invisible and then close up again. Such visions sometimes have a transfiguring effect, turning a camel driver into a Mohammed, a goat girl into a Joan of Arc. Solitude brings out a certain amount of sublime exaltation.

— Victor Hugo

There are instincts for all the encounters of life.

— Victor Hugo

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.

— Victor Hugo

There his wife died of a malady of the chest, from which she had long suffered. He had no children.

— Victor Hugo

I understand only love and liberty.

— Victor Hugo

At the period of his most abject misery, he had observed that young girls turned round when he passed by, and he fled or hid, with death in his soul. He thought that they were staring at him because of his old clothes, and that they were laughing at them; the fact is, that they stared at him because of his grace, and that they dreamed of him.

— Victor Hugo

We who die here will die in the radiance of the future. We go to a tomb flooded with the light of dawn.

— Victor Hugo

We live in a squalid society. Success: this is the message seeping, drop by drop, down from the overriding corruption.

— Victor Hugo

And whatever he did, he always fell back onto this paradox at the core of his thought. To remain in paradise and become a demon! To re-enter hell and become an angel!

— Victor Hugo

This garden was no longer a garden, it was a colossal thicket, that is to say, something as impenetrable as a forest, as densely populated as a city, as tremulous as a nest, as tenebrous as a cathedral, as aromatic as a bouquet, as lonely as a tomb, as much a living thing as a crowd.

— Victor Hugo

Shall we weep for all the innocent, all martyrs, all children, the lowly as well as the exalted? I agree to that. But in that case, as I have told you, we must go back further than ’93, and our tears must begin before Louis XVII. I will weep with you over the children of kings, provided that you will weep with me over the children of the people.

— Victor Hugo

Sire! do not break out into thunder over such a nonentity as myself. God’s great thunderbolts are not for bombarding lettuces.

— Victor Hugo

Bewigged tragedy has a reason for its existence.

— Victor Hugo

The towns make men ferocious because they make them corrupt. Mountains, sea, and forest make men reckless. They stir the wildness of men’s nature, but do not necessarily destroy what is human.

— Victor Hugo

It is myself, always myself, myself alone. But, good God! All this egotism. Different forms of egotism, but still egotism! Suppose I should think a little of others? The highest duty is to think of others.

— Victor Hugo

Cuando lo vieron ganar dinero, dijeron: es un comerciante. Cuando lo vieron repartir el dinero, dijeron: es un ambicioso. Cuando lo vieron rechazar los honores, dijeron: es un aventurero. Cuando lo vieron rechazar el trato social, dijeron: es un borrico.

— Victor Hugo

We live in a sad society. Succeed – that is the advice which falls drop by drop from the overhanging corruption.

— Victor Hugo

The solitary man is a modified savage, accepted by civilization. He who wanders most is most alone; hence his continual change of place. To remain anywhere long, suffocated him with the sense of being tamed. He spent his life in moving on.

— Victor Hugo

I am thirsty. Mortals, I am dreaming: that the turn of Heidelberg has an attack of apoplecy, and that I am one of the dozen leeches which will be applied to it. I want a drink.

— Victor Hugo
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