Victor Hugo

Quotations

  • ''I refuse the oration of all churches. I ask a prayer of all souls. I believe in God.''
    Victor Hugo (1802-1885), French poet, novelist, playwright, essayist. Trans. by William G. Allen. From the will of Victor Hugo. Written on August 2, 1883, when Hugo believed himself to be near death.
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  • ''They say love is blindness of heart; I say not to love is blindness.''
    Victor Hugo (1802-1885), French poet, novelist, playwright, essayist. Trans. by Lorenzo O'Rourke. "Thoughts," Postscriptum de ma vie, in Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography, Funk and Wagnalls (1907).
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  • ''Freedom in art, freedom in society, this is the double goal towards which all consistent and logical minds must strive.''
    Victor Hugo (1802-1885), French poet, novelist, playwright, essayist. Trans. by William G. Allen. Hernani, preface (1830).
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  • ''Woman, nude, is the blue sky. Clouds and garments are an obstacle to contemplation. Beauty and infinity would be gazed upon unveiled.''
    Victor Hugo (1802-1885), French poet, novelist, playwright, essayist. Trans. by Lorenzo O'Rourke. "Thoughts," Postscriptum de ma vie, in Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography, Funk and Wagnalls (1907).
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  • ''An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not the invasion of ideas.''
    Victor Hugo (1802-1885), French poet, dramatist, novelist. Histoire d'un Crime, conclusion (written 1852, published 1877).
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  • ''One sometimes says: He killed himself because he was bored with life. One ought rather to say: He killed himself because he was bored by lack of life.''
    Victor Hugo (1802-1885), French poet, novelist, playwright, essayist. Trans. by Lorenzo O'Rourke. "Thoughts," Postscriptum de ma vie, in Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography, Funk and Wagnalls (1907).
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  • ''Because one doesn't like the way things are is no reason to be unjust towards God.''
    Victor Hugo (1802-1885), French poet, novelist, playwright, essayist. Trans. by William G. Allen. Jean Valjean, in Les Misérables (1862).
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  • ''Smallness in a great man seems smaller by its disproportion with all the rest.''
    Victor Hugo (1802-1885), French poet, novelist, playwright, essayist. Trans. by Lorenzo O'Rourke. "Thoughts," Postscriptum de ma vie, in Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography, Funk and Wagnalls (1907).
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  • ''To rise from error to truth is rare and beautiful.''
    Victor Hugo (1802-1885), French poet, novelist, playwright, essayist. Trans. by William G. Allen. La Légende des siècles, preface (1859).
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  • ''Concision in style, precision in thought, decision in life.''
    Victor Hugo (1802-1885), French poet, novelist, playwright, essayist. Trans. by Lorenzo O'Rourke. "Thoughts," Postscriptum de ma vie, in Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography, Funk and Wagnalls (1907).
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Letter

You can see it already: chalks and ochers;
Country crossed with a thousand furrow-lines;
Ground-level rooftops hidden by the shrubbery;
Sporadic haystacks standing on the grass;
Smoky old rooftops tarnishing the landscape;
A river (not Cayster or Ganges, though:
A feeble Norman salt-infested watercourse);
On the right, to the north, bizarre terrain
All angular--you'd think a shovel did it.

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