1,711 Quotes by Victor Hugo

Let us have compassion for those under chastisement. Alas, who are we ourselves? Who am I and who are you? Whence do we come and is it quite certain that we did nothing before we were born? This earth is not without some resemblance to a gaol. Who knows but that man is a victim of divine justice? Look closely at life. It is so constituted that one senses punishment everywhere.

Women are more credulous than men.

She might have melted a heart of stone, but nothing can melt a heart of wood.

The word Gothic, in the sense in which it is generally employed, is wholly unsuitable, but wholly consecrated. Hence we accept it and we adopt it, like all the rest of the world, to characterize the architecture of the second half of the Middle Ages, where the ogive is the principle which succeeds the architecture of the first period, of which the semi-circle is the father.

The most ferocious animals are disarmed by caresses to their young.

Woe, alas, to those who have loved only bodies, forms, appearances! Death will rob them of everything. Try to love souls, you will find them again.

To know, to think, to dream. That is everything.

There are no rules, no models; rather, there are no rules other than the general laws of Nature.

A republic may be called the climate of civilization.