Victor Hugo

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.

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.

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.

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.

Life is the flower for which love is the honey.

Scepticism, that dry caries of the intelligence.

A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.

Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant.