Sublime upon sublime scarcely presents a contrast, and we need a little rest from everything, even the beautiful. – Victor Hugo
The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather in spite of ourselves. – Victor Hugo
Death has its revelations: the great sorrows which open the heart open the mind as well; light comes to us with our grief. As for me, I have faith; I believe in a future life. How could I do otherwise? My daughter was a soul; I saw this soul. I touched it, so to speak. – Victor Hugo
In the French language, there is a great gulf between prose and poetry; in English, there is hardly any difference. It is a splendid privilege of the great literary languages Greek, Latin, and French that they possess a prose. English has not this privilege. There is no prose in English. – Victor Hugo
Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. – Victor Hugo
The mountains, the forest, and the sea, render men savage; they develop the fierce, but yet do not destroy the human. – Victor Hugo
Love, in the eyes of the world, is either a carnal appetite or a vague fancy, which possession extinguishes or absence destroys. That is why it is commonly said, with a strange abuse of words, that passion does not endure. – Victor Hugo
The animal is ignorant of the fact that he knows. The man is aware of the fact that he is ignorant. – Victor Hugo
It is most pleasant to commit a just action which is disagreeable to someone whom one does not like. – Victor Hugo
Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots. – Victor Hugo
To think is of itself to be useful; it is always and in all cases a striving toward God. – Victor Hugo
Hell is an outrage on humanity. When you tell me that your deity made you in his image, I reply that he must have been very ugly. – Victor Hugo
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. – Victor Hugo