Quotes · verified word for word in the text
Victor Hugo quotes
11 quotes from 2 of Victor Hugo’s books on this site, book by book. Each quote is copied exactly from the book’s text in this site’s reader (the Project Gutenberg e-text named under each book) and links to its passage; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against that text. Quotes we could not find in a book we host are not listed.
Les Misérables
Teach those who are ignorant as many things as possible; society is culpable, in that it does not afford instruction gratis; it is responsible for the night which it produces.
— Spoken by a character · IV. WORKS CORRESPONDING TO WORDS
“It is nothing to die; it is dreadful not to live.”
— Spoken by a character · V. A NIGHT BEHIND WHICH THERE IS DAY
The supreme happiness of life consists in the conviction that one is loved; loved for one’s own sake—let us say rather, loved in spite of one’s self; this conviction the blind man possesses.
“Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I buy from you; I withdraw it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God.”
— Spoken by a character · XII. THE BISHOP WORKS
“Do not forget, never forget, that you have promised to use this money in becoming an honest man.”
— Spoken by a character · XII. THE BISHOP WORKS
He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often returned with two.
Great perils have this fine characteristic, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers.
Love is the only ecstasy. All the rest weeps.
To love, or to have loved,—this suffices. Demand nothing more.
Curiosity is a sort of gluttony. To see is to devour.
There is nothing like dogma for bringing forth dreams. And there is nothing like dreams for engendering the future. Utopia to-day, flesh and blood to-morrow.
Notre-Dame de Paris
The church of Notre-Dame de Paris is still no doubt, a majestic and sublime edifice.