Victor Hugo

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

Rhyme, that enslaved queen, that supreme charm of our poetry, that creator of our meter.

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.

Peace is the virtue of civilization. War is its crime.

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.

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.

As a means of contrast with the sublime, the grotesque is, in our view, the richest source that nature can offer.

Nature has made a pebble and a female. The lapidary makes the diamond, and the lover makes the woman.

Love is a portion of the soul itself, and it is of the same nature as the celestial breathing of the atmosphere of paradise.

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.

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

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

He, who every morning plans the transactions of the day, and follows that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through a labyrinth of the most busy life.

Men become accustomed to poison by degrees.

Men like me are impossible until the day when they become necessary.

Civil war? What does that mean? Is there any foreign war? Isn't every war fought between men, between brothers?

The mountains, the forest, and the sea, render men savage they develop the fierce, but yet do not destroy the human.

I love all men who think, even those who think otherwise than myself.

Doing nothing is happiness for children and misery for old men.

Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.

Love is a portion of the soul itself, and it is of the same nature as the celestial breathing of the atmosphere of paradise.

The first symptom of love in a young man is timidity in a girl boldness.

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

I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes, - and the stars through his soul.

To love beauty is to see light.