1,711 Quotes by Victor Hugo

So long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Miserables cannot fail to be of use.

Style is the substance of the subject called unceasingly to the surface.

Every bird which flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw. Germination includes the hatching of a meteor and the tap of a swallow's bill breaking the egg, and it leads forward the birth of an earth-worm and the advent of Socrates.

There are no rules for felicity.

If nobody loved, the sun would go out.

Short as life is, we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time.

In this way, his unhappy soul struggled with its anguish. Eighteen hundred years before this unfortunate man, the mysterious Being, in whom all the sanctities and all the sufferings of humanity come together, He too, while the olive trees trembled in the fierce breath of the Infinite, had brushed away the fearful cup that appeared before him, streaming with shadow and running over with darkness, in the star-filled depths. (pg. 236)

To lie a little is not possible: he who lies, lies the whole lie.

There is no rapture in the love which is prompted by esteem; such affection is lasting, not passionate.