Quill / Authors / Victor Hugo quotes
Victor Hugo quotes
Victor Hugo (1802 to 1885) was a French poet, novelist and politician. He opposed Napoleon III and spent nearly twenty years in exile, much of it on Guernsey, where he finished Les Misérables, published in 1862. Quill quotes it and the earlier Notre-Dame de Paris, both in Isabel Florence Hapgood's translations.
Hugo digresses on an epic scale. He'll stop a story for pages on the sewers of Paris, and many of his best sentences turn up in those asides. If you've only seen the musical, there's a much odder book waiting.
22 lines shown, from the 23 in Quill. Only lines checked against a public-domain text appear on this page.
Les Miserables
Read Les Miserables on Project Gutenberg
To love beauty is to see the light.
Read the passage around this line
The ideal is nothing but the culminating point of logic, the same as the beautiful is nothing but the summit of the true. Artistic peoples are also consistent peoples. To love beauty is to see the light. That is why the torch of Europe, that is to say of civilization, was first borne by Greece, who passed it on to Italy, who handed it on to France. Divine, illuminating nations of scouts! Vitælampada tradunt.
Stop while there is yet time, and save yourself!
Read the passage around this line
… be an idler! prepare to toil. There is a certain formidable machine, have you seen it? It is the rolling-mill. You must be on your guard against it, it is crafty and ferocious; if it catches hold of the skirt of your coat, you will be drawn in bodily. That machine is laziness. Stop while there is yet time, and save yourself! Otherwise, it is all over with you; in a short time you will be among the gearing. Once entangled, hope for nothing more. Toil, lazybones! there is no more repose for you! The iron hand of implacable toil has seized you. You do not wish to earn your living, to have a task, to …
Try to love souls, you will find them again.
Read the passage around this line
Deep hearts, sage minds, take life as God has made it; it is a long trial, an incomprehensible preparation for an unknown destiny. This destiny, the true one, begins for a man with the first step inside the tomb. Then something appears to him, and he begins to distinguish the definitive. The definitive, meditate upon that word. The living perceive the infinite; the definitive permits itself to be seen only by the dead. In the meanwhile, love and suffer, hope and contemplate. Woe, alas! to him who shall have loved only bodies, forms, appearances! Death will deprive him of all. Try to love souls, you will find them again.
Rise, if you will, but let it be that you may grow great.
Read the passage around this line
… always proceed from the trembling of excited masses; there are mad rages, there are cracked bells, all tocsins do not give out the sound of bronze. The brawl of passions and ignorances is quite another thing from the shock of progress. Show me in what direction you are going. Rise, if you will, but let it be that you may grow great. There is no insurrection except in a forward direction. Any other sort of rising is bad; every violent step towards the rear is a revolt; to retreat is to commit a deed of violence against the human race. Insurrection is a fit of rage on the part of truth; the pavements which …
Love has no middle course; it either ruins or it saves.
Read the passage around this line
… Love, at the height where it is absolute, is complicated with some indescribably celestial blindness of modesty. But what dangers you run, O noble souls! Often you give the heart, and we take the body. Your heart remains with you, you gaze upon it in the gloom with a shudder. Love has no middle course; it either ruins or it saves. All human destiny lies in this dilemma. This dilemma, ruin, or safety, is set forth no more inexorably by any fatality than by love. Love is life, if it is not death. Cradle; also coffin. The same sentiment says “yes” and “no” in the human heart. Of all the things that God has …
Ye who suffer because ye love, love yet more.
Read the passage around this line
Ye who suffer because ye love, love yet more. To die of love, is to live in it.
Do you know that to do nothing is a melancholy resolution?
Night brings wisdom; we may add, night soothes.
Love is an ardent forgetfulness of all the rest.
How sad is the soul, when it is sad through love!
One ought to reflect that life is not eternal.
If there is no sun, one must be made.
Love each other well and always.
To dare; that is the price of progress.
All life falls in ruin around one; one resists.
Love is the salutation of the angels to the stars.
Happiness desires that all the world should be happy.
Learn this: joy is not only joyous; it is great.
Notre-Dame de Paris
Read Notre-Dame de Paris on Project Gutenberg
New things spring into life every day.
The heart of man cannot remain long in one extremity.
Never mind! ’Tis not written that because one is of small account one should take fright at a great enterprise.
Excess of grief, like excess of joy is a violent thing which lasts but a short time.
In Quill, a line opens into the passage around it. Free forever for basic widgets and 3 of your own lines. Pro from $2.99 a month, with unlimited lines.
Coming soon to the App Store