Victor Hugo: Trending quotes (page 8)

“To pay compliments to the one we love is the first method of caressing, a demi-audacity venturing. A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.”

“The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real that we exist, it is by the ideal that we live.”

“But secondly you say 'society must exact vengeance, and society must punish'. Wrong on both counts. Vengeance comes from the individual and punishment from God.”

“There comes an hour when protest no longer suffices; after philosophy there must be action; the strong hand finishes what the idea has sketched.”

“Great griefs exhaust. They discourage us with life. The man into whom they enter feels something taken from him. In youth, their visit is sad; later on, it is ominous.”

“Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over, this is recognised: that the human race has been harshly treated, but that it has advanced.”

“A little girl without a doll is almost as unhappy, and quite as impossible, as a woman without children."

from chapter VIII of Les Miserables”

“One drop of wine is enough to redden a whole glass of water.”

“Happiness lies for those who cry, those who hurt, those who have searched, and those who have tried for only they can appreciate the importance of people who have touched their lives.”

“God will bless you,' said he, 'you are an angel since you take care of the flowers.'
'No,' she replied. 'I am the devil, but that's all the same to me.”

“To study in Paris is to be born in Paris!”

“To destroy abuses is not enough; Habits must also be changed. The windmill has gone, but the wind is still there."
~old man G--- to Monseigneur Bienvenu Myriel”

“The straight line, a respectable optical illusion which ruins many a man.”

“A cannonball travels only two thousand miles an hour; light travels two hundred thousand miles a second. Such is the superiority of Jesus Christ over Napoleon.”

“Are you afraid of the good you might do?”

“We need those who pray constantly to compensate for those who do not pray at all.”

“Another story must begin!”

“When a woman is talking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes”

“He who despairs is wrong.”