Victor Hugo

She would have softened a heart of granite; but you cannot soften a heart of wood.

I do not know whether it is that I no longer understand French, or you no longer speak it; but the fact is I do not understand you.

A man is not idle, because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labour and there is an invisible labour.

Thales remained motionless for four years. He founded philosophy.

He who is escaping never coughs and never sneezes.

It is a mistake to imagine that man can exhaust his destiny, or can reach the bottom of anything whatever. Alas! what are all these destinies thus driven pell-mell? whither go they? why are they so? He who knows that, sees all the shadow. He is alone. His name is God.

Unreflecting, headlong minds say: "Of what use are those motionless figures by the side of mystery? What purpose do they serve? What do they effect?"Alas! in the presence of that obscurity which surrounds us and awaits us, not knowing what the vast dispersion of all things will do with us, we answer: There is, perhaps, no work more sublime than that which is accomplished by these souls; and we add, There is no labour, perhaps, more useful.

That recruit was at home, hunting up his "card," and rather unlikely he was to find it, as it was in Fauchelevent's pocket.

Without at all invalidating what we have just said, we believe that a perpetual remembrance of the tomb is proper for the living. On this point, the priest and the philosopher agree: We must die.

Great blunders are often made, like large ropes, of a multitude of fibers.

One can no more prevent the mind from returning to an idea than the sea from returning to a shore. In the case of the sailor, this is called a tide; in the case of the guilty, it is called remorse.

Years place at last a venerable crown upon a head.