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Quotations by Victor Hugo 181 Found Born: Friday, February 26, 1802 A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil. A creditor is worse than a slave-owner; for the master owns only your person, but a creditor owns your dignity, and can command it. A faith is a necessity to a man. Woe to him who believes in nothing. A great artist is a great man in a great child. A library implies an act of faith. A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor. A mother's arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them. A war between Europeans is a civil war. Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters. All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come. Almost all our desires, when examined, contain something too shameful to reveal. Amnesty is as good for those who give it as for those who receive it. It has the admirable quality of bestowing mercy on both sides. An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise. An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. Architecture has recorded the great ideas of the human race. Not only every religious symbol, but every human thought has its page in that vast book. As a means of contrast with the sublime, the grotesque is, in our view, the richest source that nature can offer. As the purse is emptied, the heart is filled. Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings. Be like the bird who, pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing she hath wings. Because one doesn't like the way things are is no reason to be unjust towards God. Blessed be Providence which has given to each his toy: the doll to the child, the child to the woman, the woman to the man, the man to the devil! But when ill indeed, Even dismissing the doctor don't always succeed. By putting forward the hands of the clock you shall not advance the hour. Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees. Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots. Civil war? What does that mean? Is there any foreign war? Isn't every war fought between men, between brothers? Close by the Rights of Man, at the least set beside them, are the Rights of the Spirit. Common sense is in spite of, not as the result of education. Concision in style, precision in thought, decision in life. Conscience is God present in man. Curiosity is one of the forms of feminine bravery. Dear God! how beauty varies in nature and art. In a woman the flesh must be like marble; in a statue the marble must be like flesh. Despotism is a long crime. Do not let it be your aim to be something, but to be someone. Doing nothing is happiness for children and misery for old men. Each man should frame life so that at some future hour fact and his dreaming meet. Everything being a constant carnival, there is no carnival left. Evil. Mistrust those who rejoice at it even more than those who do it. Fashions have done more harm than revolutions. Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age. Freedom in art, freedom in society, this is the double goal towards which all consistent and logical minds must strive. Genius is a promontory jutting out into the infinite. Genius: the superhuman in man. Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers. Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come. Habit is the nursery of errors. Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. He who is not capable of enduring poverty is not capable of being free. He who opens a school door, closes a prison. 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.
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