"The supreme ordeal, let us say rather, the only ordeal, is the loss of the beloved being."
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Quote collection
Victor Hugo quotes (page 47 of 49)
966 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"To commit the least possible sin is the law for man. To live without sin is the dream of an angel. Everything terrestrial is subject to sin. Sin is a gravitation."
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"The soul in the darkness sins, but the real sinner is he who caused the darkness."
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"Great blunders are often made, like large ropes, of a multitude of fibers. Take the cable thread by thread, take separately all the little determining motives, you break them one after another, and you say: that is all! Wind them and twist them together, they become an enormity."
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"These Greek capitals, black with age, and quite deeply graven in the stone, with I know not what signs peculiar to Gothic calligraphy imprinted upon their forms and upon their attitudes, as though with the purpose of revealing that it had been a hand of the Middle Ages which had inscribed them there, and especially the fatal and melancholy meaning contained in them, struck the author deeply."
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"You would have imagined her at one moment a maniac, at another a queen."
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"The word Gothic, in the sense in which it is generally employed, is wholly unsuitable, but wholly consecrated. Hence we accept it and we adopt it, like all the rest of the world, to characterize the architecture of the second half of the Middle Ages, where the ogive is the principle which succeeds the architecture of the first period, of which the semi-circle is the father."
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"Desiring always to be in mourning, he clothed himself with night."
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"Is there not in every human soul a primitive spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this world and immortal in the next, which can be developed by goodness, kindled, lit up, and made to radiate, and which evil can never entirely extinguish."
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"A breath of Paris preserves the soul."
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"We are given up to those gods, those monsters, those giants, — our thoughts."
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"Sublime upon sublime scarcely presents a contrast, and we need a little rest from everything, even the beautiful."
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"Diamonds are found only in the dark bowels of the earth; truths are found only in the depths of thought. It seemed to him that after descending into those depths after long groping in the blackest of this darkness, he had at last found one of these diamonds, one of these truths, and that he held it in his hand; and it blinded him to look at it. (pg. 231)"
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"Spira, spera. (breathe, hope)"
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"Friendship exists outside our modern economy of scarcity... It's not about apportioning vanishing resources of time and energy. Friendship is a blessed relic of the ancient economy of the gift, and the time freely given to people dear to you actually creates magical abundance."
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"Whatever causes night in our souls may leave stars. Cimourdain was full of virtues and truth, but they shine out of a dark background."
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"Idleness, pleasure, what abysses! To do nothing is a dreary course to take, be sure of it. To live idle upon the substance of society! To be useless, that is to say, noxious! This leads straight to the lowest depth of misery."
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"Houses are like the human beings that inhabit them."
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"Monsieur' to a convict is a glass of water to a man dying of thirst at sea; ignominy thirsts for respect."
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"Memory is a gulf that a word can move to its lowest depths."
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