Victor Hugo

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

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

He had finally come hardly to look at nothing but the sky, the only thing that truth can see from the bottom of her well.

Poor mothers, he thought. There is one thing sadder than to see their children die — to see them lead evil lives.

Thought is the labor of the intellect, reverie is its pleasure.

The wind of revolutions is not tractable.

Should we continue to look upwards? Is the light we can see in the sky one of those which will presently be extinguished? The ideal is terrifying to behold, lost as it is in the depths, small, isolated, a pin-point, brilliant but threatened on all sides by the dark forces that surround it: nevertheless, no more in danger than a star in the jaws of the clouds.

Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers.

Thoughtful persons seldom speak of happiness or unhappiness. 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.

The endeavor is vain, you cannot annihilate that eternal relic of the human heart, love.

Women play with their beauty as children do with their knives. They wound themselves with it.

A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.