Author · French · 1802 – 1885 · 181 quotes
When liberty returns, I will return.
Victor Hugo
Author · French · 1802 – 1885
I'm religiously opposed to religion.
Those who live are those who fight.
Toleration is the best religion.
To love is to act.
Nations, like stars, are entitled to eclipse. All is well, provided the light returns and the eclipse does not become endless night. Dawn and resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul.
Genius: the superhuman in man.
One sometimes says: 'He killed himself because he was bored with life.' One ought rather to say: 'He killed himself because he was bored by lack of life.'
Wisdom is a sacred communion.
To think of shadows is a serious thing.
Puns are the droppings of soaring wits.
To contemplate is to look at shadows.
Taste is the common sense of genius.
The ox suffers, the cart complains.
There is a sacred horror about everything grand. It is easy to admire mediocrity and hills; but whatever is too lofty, a genius as well as a mountain, an assembly as well as a masterpiece, seen too near, is appalling.
Virtue has a veil, vice a mask.
Habit is the nursery of errors.
How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said.
Liberation is not deliverance.
Stupidity talks, vanity acts.
Despotism is a long crime.
