Victor Hugo Quotes

"In each age men of genius undertake the ascent. From below, the world follows them with their eyes. These men go up the mountain, enter the clouds, disappear, reappear, People watch them, mark them. They walk by the side of precipices. They daringly pursue their road. See them aloft, see them in the distance; they are but black specks. On they go. The road is uneven, its difficulties constant. At each step a wall, at each step a trap. As they rise the cold increases. They must make their ladder, cut the ice and walk on it., hewing the steps in haste. A storm is raging. Nevertheless they go forward in their madness. The air becomes difficult to breath. The abyss yawns below them. Some fall. Others stop and retrace their steps; there is a sad weariness. The bold ones continue. They are eyed by the eagles; the lightning plays about them: the hurricane is furious. No matter, they persevere."

"Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters."

"Separated lovers cheat absence by a thousand fancies which have their own reality. They are prevented from seeing one another and they cannot write; nevertheless they find countless mysterious ways of corresponding, by sending each other the song of birds, the scent of flowers, the laughter of children, the light of the sun, the sighing of the wind, and the gleam of the stars --all the beauties of creation."

"Wisdom is a sacred communion."

"Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent."

"What would be ugly in a garden constitutes beauty in a mountain."

"All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come."

"Fashions have done more harm than revolutions."

"Each man should frame life so that at some future hour fact and his dreaming meet."

"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."

"To love beauty is to see light."

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

"When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age."

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

"Life is the flower for which love is the honey."

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

"A faith is a necessity to a man. Woe to him who believes in nothing."

"A mother's arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them."

"A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil."

"To love another person is to see the face of God. [Les Miserables]"