Victor Hugo Quotes - Page 36

• It is in the name of Moses that Bellarmin thunderstrikes Galileo; and this great vulgarizer of the great seeker Copernicus, Galileo, the old man of truth, the magian of the heavens, was reduced to repeating on his knees word for word after the inquisitor this formula of shame: "Corde sincera et fide non ficta abjuro maledico et detestor supradictos errores et hereses." Falsehood put an ass's hood on science.

  Victor Hugo

  Science, Men, Names

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• The soul does not give itself up to despair until it has exhausted all illusions.

  Victor Hugo

  Giving, Soul, Despair

  Victor Hugo (1862). “Les Miserables”, p.463

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• A thousand men enslaved fear one beast free.

  Victor Hugo

  Fear, Men, Beast

  Victor Hugo (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Victor Hugo (Illustrated)”, p.7859, Delphi Classics

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• Whenever we encounter the Infinite in man, however imperfectly understood, we treat it with respect. Whether in the synagogue, the mosque, the pagoda, or the wigwam, there is a hideous aspect which we execrate and a sublime aspect which we venerate. So great a subject for spiritual contemplation, such measureless dreaming - the echo of God on the human wall!

  Victor Hugo

  Dream, Spiritual, Wall

  Victor Hugo (1980). “Les misérables”, Viking Pr

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• There are plenty who regard a wall behind which something is happening as a very curious thing.

  Victor Hugo

  Wall, Curious, Behinds

  Victor Hugo (2012). “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”, p.2, Courier Corporation

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• We are on the side of religion as opposed to religions, and we are among those who believe in the wretched inadequacy of sermons and the sublimity of prayer.

  Victor Hugo

  Prayer, Believe, Religion

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• God was bored by him.

  Victor Hugo

  Sarcastic, Bored

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• Every bird which flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw. Germination includes the hatching of a meteor and the tap of a swallow's bill breaking the egg, and it leads forward the birth of an earth-worm and the advent of Socrates.

  Victor Hugo

  Eggs, Bird, Earth

  Victor Hugo (1994). “Les Miserables Volume Two”, p.606, Wordsworth Editions

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• We should judge a man much more surely from what he dreams than from what he thinks.

  Victor Hugo

  Dream, Wisdom, Men

  Victor Hugo (1863). “Les misérables”

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• There exists, at the bottom of all abasement and misfortune, a last extreme which rebels and joins battle with the forces of law and respectability in a desperate struggle, waged partly by cunning and partly by violence, at once sick and ferocious, in which it attacks the prevailing social order with the pin-pricks of vice and the hammer-blows of crime.

  Victor Hugo

  Depression, Struggle, Blow

  Victor Hugo (1980). “Les misérables”, Viking Pr

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• Thought is the work of the intellect, reverie is its self-indulgence. To substitute day-dreaming for thought is to confuse a poison with a source of nourishment.

  Victor Hugo

  Dream, Self, Poison

  Victor Hugo (1980). “Les misérables”, Viking Pr

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• I am an intelligent river which has reflected successively all the banks before which it has flowed by meditating only on the images offered by those changing shores.

  Victor Hugo

  Intelligent, Rivers, Shore

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• O youth! thou often tearest thy wings against the thorns of voluptuousness.

  Victor Hugo

  Wings, Thorns, Youth

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• Phenomena intersect; to see but one is to see nothing.

  Victor Hugo

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• There is one spectacle grander than the sea, That is the sky.

  Victor Hugo

  Nature, Sea, Sky

  Victor Hugo (1994). “Les Miserables Volume One”, p.148, Wordsworth Editions

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• It is only barbarous nations who have a sudden growth after a victory

  Victor Hugo

  Growth, Victory, Nigeria Independence

  Victor Hugo (1862). “Cosette”, p.32

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• When people look back at their childhood or youth, their wistfulness comes from the memory, not of what their lives had been in those years, but of what life had then promised to be. The expectation of some indefinable splendor, of the unusual, the exciting, the great is an attribute of youth and the process of aging is the process of that expectations' gradual extinction. One does not have to let it happen. But that fire dies for lack of fuel, under the gray weight of disappointments.

  Victor Hugo

  Memories, Disappointment, Fire

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• Symmetry is tedious, and tedium is the very basis of mourning. Despair yawns.

  Victor Hugo

  Boredom, Mourning, Despair

  'Les Misèrables' (1862) vol. 2, bk. 4, ch. 1

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• The soul in the darkness sins, but the real sinner is he who caused the darkness.

  Victor Hugo

  Real, Soul, Darkness

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• As for the bishop, the sight of the guillotine was a great shock to him, from which he recovered only slowly.

  Victor Hugo

  Sight, Bishops, Guillotine

  Victor Hugo (1987). “Les Misérables”, Signet Classics

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• You would have imagined her at one moment a maniac, at another a queen.

  Victor Hugo

  Queens, Moments, Maniacs

  Victor Hugo (1988). “The Hunchback of Notre Dame: 2”, Signet Classics

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• Desiring always to be in mourning, he clothed himself with night.

  Victor Hugo

  Night, Mourning

  Victor Hugo (2000). “Les Mis??rables”, p.589, Modern Library

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• People generally will soon understand that writers should be judged, not according to rules and species, which are contrary to nature and art, but according to the immutable principles of the art of composition, and the special laws of their individual temperaments.

  Victor Hugo

  Art, Law, People

  Victor Hugo (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Victor Hugo (Illustrated)”, p.12495, Delphi Classics

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• The supreme ordeal, let us say rather, the only ordeal, is the loss of the beloved being.

  Victor Hugo

  Loss, Beloved, Ordeals

  Victor Hugo (1994). “Les Miserables Volume Two”, p.784, Wordsworth Editions

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• To rove about, musing, that is to say loitering, is, for a philosopher, a good way of spending time.

  Victor Hugo

  Way, Leisure, Philosopher

  Victor Hugo (1862). “Marius”, p.9

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