1,711 Quotes by Victor Hugo

The English took the eagle and Austrians the eaglet. [Fr., L'Angleterre prit l'aigle, et l'Autriche l'aiglon.]

Everything bows to success, even grammar.

Do you know what friendship is?' he asked. 'Yes,' replied the gypsy; 'it is to be brother and sister; two souls which touch without mingling, two fingers on one hand.' 'And love?' pursued Gringoire. 'Oh! love!' said she, and her voice trembled, and her eye beamed. 'That is to be two and to be but one. A man and a woman mingled into one angel. It is heaven.

The drama is complete poetry. The ode and the epic contain it only in germ; it contains both of them in a state of high development, and epitomizes both.

Great buildings, like great mountains, are the work of centuries.

He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two.

A sewer is a cynic. It tells All.

A benevolent malefactor, merciful, gentle, helpful, clement, a convict, returning good for evil, giving back pardon for hatred, preferring pity to vengeance, preferring to ruin himself rather than to ruin his enemy, saving him who had smitten him, kneeling on the heights of virtue, more nearly akin to an angel than to a man. Javert was constrained to admit to himself that this monster existed. Things could not go on in this manner.

Never laugh at those who suffer; suffer sometimes those who laugh.