quotes from classic

He who is not capable of enduring poverty is not capable of being free.

more quotes from Victor Marie Hugo

The man who does not know other languages, unless he is a man of genius, necessarily has deficiencies in his ideas.

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The ode lives upon the ideal, the epic upon the grandiose, the drama upon the real.

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What is grace? It is the inspiration from on high: it is love; it is liberty. Grace is the spirit of law. This discovery of the spirit of law belongs to Saint Paul; and what he calls "grace" from a heavenly point of view, we, from an earthly point, call "rigtheousness."

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Without vanity, without coquetry, without curiosity, in a word, without the fall, woman would not be woman. Much of her grace is in her frailty.

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The last resort of kings, the cannonball. The last resort of the people, the paving stone.

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It is not enough for us to prostrate ourselves under the tree which is Creation, and to contemplate its tremendous branches filled with stars. We have a duty to perform, to work upon the human soul, to defend the mystery against the miracle, to worship the incomprehensible while rejecting the absurd; to accept, in the inexplicable, only what is necessary; to dispel the superstitions that surround religion --to rid God of His Maggots.

more quotes from Victor Marie Hugo

Reaction - a boat which is going against the current but which does not prevent the river from flowing on.

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

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As for the author, he is profoundly unaware of what the classical or romantic genre might consist of.... In literature, as in all things, ther...

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Fashions have done more harm than revolutions. Funny

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Pain is as diverse as man. One suffers as one can.

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There are fathers who do not love their children, but there is no grandfather who does not adore his grandson.

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Prayer is an august avowal of ignorance.

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There are obstinate and unknown braves who defend themselves inch by inch in the shadows against the fatal invasion of want and turpitude. There are noble and mysterious triumphs which no eye sees. No renown rewards, and no flourish of trumpets salutes. Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment, and poverty and battlefields which have their heroes.

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If a man has his throat cut in Paris, it's a murder. If 50,000 people are murdered in the east, it is a question.

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What are the convulsions of a city in comparison with the insurrections of the soul? Man is a depth still greater than the people. Jean Valjean at that very moment was the prey of a terrible upheaval. Every sort of gulf had opened again within him. He also was trembling, like Paris, on the brink of an obscure and formidable revolution. A few hours had sufficed to bring this about. His destiny and his conscience had suddenly been covered with gloom. Of him also, as well as of Paris, it might have been said: Two principles are face to face. The white angel and the black angel are about to seize each other on the bridge of the abyss. Which of the two will hurl the other over? Who will carry the day?

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In this world, which is so plainly the antechamber of another, there are no happy men. The true division of humanity is between those who live in light and those who live in darkness. Our aim must be to diminish the number of the latter and increase the number of the former. That is why we demand education and knowledge.

more quotes from Victor Marie Hugo

The drama is complete poetry. The ode and the epic contain it only in germ; it contains both of them in a state of high development, and epitomizes both.

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The little people must be sacred to the big ones, and it is from the rights of the weak that the duty of the strong is comprised.

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