As for us, we respect the past here and there, and we spare it, above all, provided that it consents to be dead. If it insists on being alive, we attack it, and we try to kill it.

— Victor Hugo

A shadow is hard to seize by the throat and dash to the ground.

— Victor Hugo

Asheville smiles with the self-satisfied smugness of a man whose vanity is tickled

— Victor Hugo

As long as ignorance and misery exist in the world, books like the one you are about to read are, perhaps, not entirely useless

— Victor Hugo

As the purse is emptied the heart is filled.

— Victor Hugo

At certain moments, the foot slips ; at others, the ground gives way. How many times had that conscience, furious for the right, grasped and overwhelmed him! How many times had truth, inexorable, planted her knee upon his breast! How many times, thrown to the ground by the light, had he cried to it for mercy!

— Victor Hugo

At five in the morning, some policemen, unannounced, entered the house of a man named Pardon, later a member of the section of the Barricade-Merry, and still later killed in the insurrection of April 1834, found him standing not far from his bed, with cartridges in his hands, caught in the act.

— Victor Hugo

At the approach of a certain dark hour, the light of Heaven fills those who are quitting the light of Earth.

— Victor Hugo

At the side of Enjoys, who represented the logic of revolution, was Combeferre, representing its philosophy. The difference between logic and philosophy is that one can decide upon war, whereas the other can only be fulfilled by peace.

— Victor Hugo

A week passed, and Jean Val jean had not taken a step in his room. He still remained in bed. The fortress said to her husband:–"The good man upstairs yonder does not get up, he no longer eats, he will not last long. That man has his sorrows, that he has. You won't get it out of my head that his daughter has made a bad marriage." The porter replied, with the tone of marital sovereignty:"If he's rich, let him have a doctor. If he is not rich, let him go without. If he has no doctor he will die."" And if he has one?"" He will die," said the porter.

— Victor Hugo