Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Do you know what friendship is... it is to be brother and sister; two souls which touch without mingling, two fingers on one hand.
The earlier works of a man of genius are always preferred to the newer ones, in order to prove that he is going down instead of up.
Marius was of the temperament that sinks into grief and remains there; Cosette was of the sort that plunges in and comes out again.
Profound hearts, wise minds, take life as God makes it; it is a long trial, and unintelligible preparation for the unknown destiny.
A creditor is worse than a slave-owner; for the master owns only your person, but a creditor owns your dignity, and can command it.
Love resembles a tree: it bends under its own weight, deeply rooted in our being and sometimes turns green in the ruins of a heart.
There is no distress so complete but that even in the most critical moments the inexplicable sunrise of hope is seen in its depths.
All roads are blocked to a philosophy which reduces everything to the word 'no.' To 'no' there is only one answer and that is 'yes.
Dear God! how beauty varies in nature and art. In a woman the flesh must be like marble; in a statue the marble must be like flesh.
The future has several names. For the weak, it is impossible; for the fainthearted, it is unknown; but for the valiant, it is ideal.
Amnesty is as good for those who give it as for those who receive it. It has the admirable quality of bestowing mercy on both sides.
A language does not become fixed. The human intellect is always on the march, or, if you prefer, in movement, and languages with it.
Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings.
Woman, nude, is the blue sky. Clouds and garments are an obstacle to contemplation. Beauty and infinity would be gazed upon unveiled.
Son, brother, father, lover, friend. There is room in the heart for all the affections, as there is room in heaven for all the stars.
When a man understands the art of seeing, he can trace the spirit of an age and the features of a king even in the knocker on a door.
...But listen, there will be more joy in heaven over the tears of a repentant sinner than over the white robes of a hundred just men.
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.
Let us leave to the brain what belongs to it, and agree that the work of the men of genius is of the superhuman, the offspring of man.
Whatever causes night in our souls may leave stars. Cimourdain was full of virtues and truth, but they shine out of a dark background.
The guillotine is the ultimate expression of Law, and its name is vengeance; it is not neutral, nor does it allow us to remain neutral.
Nature is pitiless; she never withdraws her flowers, her music, her fragrance, and her sunlight from before human cruelty or suffering.
The ideal and the beautiful are identical; the ideal corresponds to the idea, and beauty to form; hence idea and substance are cognate.
Nihilism has no substance. There is no such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing.
Do not ask the name of the person who seeks a bed for the night. He who is reluctant to give his name is the one who most needs shelter.
Revery, which is thought in its nebulous state, borders closely upon the land of sleep, by which it is bounded as by a natural frontier.
Loving is almost a substitute for thinking. Love is a burning forgetfulness of all other things. How shall we ask passion to be logical?
There is suffering in the light; in excess it burns. Flame is hostile to the wing. To burn and yet to fly, this is the miracle of genius.
To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do.
To a gargoyle on the ramparts of Notre Dame as Esmeralda rides off with Gringoire Quasimodo says. "Why was I not made of stone like thee?
When God desires to destroy a thing, he entrusts its destruction to the thing itself. Every bad institution of this world ends by suicide.
It is an unpleasant thing to go to bed without supper, it is a still less pleasant thing not to sup and not to know where one is to sleep.
Civil war.... What did the words mean? Was there any such thing as "foreign war"? Was not all warfare between men warfare between brothers?
If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.
He who contemplates the depths of Paris is seized with vertigo. Nothing is more fantastic. Nothing is more tragic. Nothing is more sublime.
The omnipotence of evil has never resulted in anything but fruitless efforts. Our thoughts always escape from whoever tries to smother them.
There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.
Strange to say, the luminous world is the invisible world; the luminous world is that which we do not see. Our eyes of flesh see only night.
The author creates a book and the people accept or not accept it. The creator of a book is an author and the creator of it`s fate are people.
This first glance of a soul which does not yet know itself is like dawn in the heavens; it is the awakening of something radiant and unknown.
The peculiarity of sunrise is to make us laugh at all our terrors of the night, and our laugh is always proportioned to the fear we have had.
M. Myriel had to undergo the fate of every newcomer in a little town, where there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think.
A little girl without a doll is almost as unhappy, and quite as impossible, as a woman without children." from chapter VIII of Les Miserables
...Though we chisel away as best we can at the mysterious block from which our life is made, the black vein of destiny continually reappears.
Who then can calculate the path of the molecule? how do we know that the creations of worlds are not determined by the fall of grains of sand?
When two souls have finally found each other, there is established between them a union which begins on earth and continues forever in heaven.
"Dost thou understand? I love thee!" he cried again."What love!" said the unhappy girl with a shudder.He resumed,--"The love of a damned soul.
I had a dream my life would be different from this hell I am living, so different from what it seemed. Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.
The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. It is marvelous, yet simple.
Seeing so much poverty everywhere makes me think that God is not rich. He gives the appearance of it, but I suspect some financial difficulties.