Victor Hugo

I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes, - and the stars through his soul.

Curiosity is one of the forms of feminine bravery.

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

Life is the flower for which love is the honey.

Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace.

Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.

Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age.

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant.

To love beauty is to see light.

Where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and which has the wider vision?

To err is human. To loaf is Parisian.

My greatness does not extend to this shelf.

The poor man shuddered, overflowed with an angelic joy; he declared in his transport that this would last through life; he said to himself that he really had not suffered enough to deserve such radiant happiness, and he thanked God, in the depths of his soul, for having permitted that he, a miserable man, should be so loved by this innocent being.

Everybody has noticed the way cats stop and loiter in a half-open door. Hasn't everyone said to a cat: For heavens sake why don't you come in? With opportunity half-open in front of them, there are men who have a similar tendency to remain undecided between two solutions, at the risk of being crushed by fate abruptly closing the opportunity. The overprudent, cats as they are, and because they are cats, sometimes run more danger than the bold

And do you know Monsieur Marius? I believe I was a little in love with you.

Let us study things that are no more. It is necessary to understand them, if only to avoid them.

Diamonds are to be found only in the darkness of the earth, and truth in the darkness of the mind.

Can human nature ever be wholly and radically transformed? Can the man whom God made good be made wicked by man? Can the soul be reshaped in its entirety by destiny and made evil because destiny is evil? Can the heart become misshapen and afflicted with ugly, incurable deformities under disproportionate misfortune, like a spinal column bent beneath a too low roof?

If I have not been exposed and am not in any danger of pursuit. But I have been exposed, I am pursued - by myself! That is a pursuer that does not readily let go.

Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions