Quotes By Author: Victor Hugo
“So bring me this man, trembling and shivering from head to foot; let me fall into his arms or down at his knees; he will weep and we shall weep, he will be eloquent and I shall be comforted, and my heart shall melt into his, he will take my soul, and I his God.But what is this kindly old gentleman to me? And what am I to him? Just one more member of the race of unfortunates, one more shade to go with the many he has seen, one more figure to add to his total of executions.”
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“From Les Miserables:All at once, in the midst of this profound calm, a fresh sound arose; a sound as celestial, divine, ineffable, ravishing, as the other had been horrible. It was a hymn which issued from the gloom, a dazzling burst of prayer and harmony in the obscure and alarming silence of the night; women’s voices, but voices composed at one and the same time of the pure accents of virgins and the innocent accent of children, — voices which are not of the earth, and which resemble those that the newborn infant still hears, and which the dying man hears already. This song proceeded from the gloomy edifice which towered above the garden. At the moment when the hubbub of demons retreated, one would have said that a choir of angels was approaching through the gloom.Cosette and Jean Valjean fell on their knees.They knew not what it was, they knew not where they were; but both of them, the man and the child, the penitent and the innocent, felt that they must kneel.These voices had this strange characteristic, that they did not prevent the building from seeming to be deserted. It was a supernatural chant in an uninhabited house. While these voices were singing, Jean Valjean thought of nothing. He no longer beheld the night; he beheld a blue sky. It seemed to him that he felt those wings which we all have within us, unfolding.The song died away. It may have lasted a long time. Jean Valjean could not have told. Hours of ecstasy are never more than a moment.”
“I see black light (his last words)”
“A writer is a world trapped in a person.”
“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.”
“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent”
“A library implies an act of faith which generations, still in darkness hid, sign in their night in witness of the dawn.”À qui la faute? (1872)”
“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.”
“Does there exist an Infinity outside ourselves? Is that infinity One, immanent and permanent, necessarily having substance, since He is infinite and if He lacked matter He would be limited, necessarily possessing intelligence since He is infinite and, lacking intelligence, He would be in that sense finite. Does this Infinity inspire in us the idea of essense, while to ourselves we can only attribute the idea of existence? In order words, is He not the whole of which we are but the part?”
“It is not easy to keep silent when silence is a lie.”
“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.”
“More powerful than the mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.”
“Each man should frame life so that at some future hour fact and his dreaming meet.”
“Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.”