Victor Hugo's classic quotes

 　　1. The first sign of true love is timidity in a boy and boldness in a girl. This is the result of their mutual acceptance of each other's personalities.

　　—Victor Hugo, *Les Misérables*
　　2. The human heart can only hold a certain degree of despair. A sponge that has absorbed enough water cannot be filled by the ocean flowing over it.
　　—*The Hunchback of Notre Dame*

　　3. The widest thing in the world is the ocean, wider still is the sky, and wider still is the human heart.
　　—*Les Misérables*
　　4. Man is not born to drag chains, but to spread his wings.
　　5. To have one's mask ripped off by others is a defeat; to rip off one's own mask is a victory.
　　—*The Toilers of the Sea*

　　6. This is the setting sun, yet we take it for the dawn.
　　—*The Hunchback of Notre Dame*


　　7. He persists when others give up; he charges forward when others retreat; he gets up immediately after every fall—such a person never fails.
　　8.
　　Not being heard is no reason for silence.
　　—Les Misérables
　　9. It is the human heart that releases infinite light, and it is also the human heart that creates boundless darkness. Light and darkness intertwine and fight each other; this is the human world that we cherish yet are utterly helpless against.
　　—Les Misérables
　　10. Aging begins with the eyes.
　　—Ruy Blas
　　11. There's a grief that can't be spoken.
　　There's a pain that goes on and on.
　　Empty chairs and empty tables.
　　Now my friends are dead and gone.
　　—Les Misérables
　　12. To make no mistakes is the dream of angels. To make as few mistakes as possible is the principle of man; mistakes are like the Earth's gravity, and everything in the world is bound to make mistakes.
　　Faith is essential for people. Those who believe in nothing will not be happy.
　　13. Man needs material things to survive; man needs ideals to live. Do you understand the difference between survival and living? Animals survive, but man lives.

　　14. Pride brings misfortune; it is often followed by destruction and shame.
　　— *The Hunchback of Notre Dame*

　　16. Pain always lurks beside joy.
　　— *The Hunchback of Notre Dame*
　　17. A leaf illuminated by sunlight always casts a shadow on its underside; the brighter the sunlight, the deeper the shadow.

　　18. Darkness shrouds the world, but ideals shine brightly and brilliantly.
　　19. Some serious people assert that after exhausting legal knowledge, humanity bravely ventures into illegal knowledge…having tasted all the fruits of the tree of wisdom, due to hunger or a lack of flavor, finally bites into the forbidden fruit.
　　— *The Hunchback of Notre Dame*

　　20. A sigh from the heart can say more than the clamor of a city.
　　— *The Biography of Victor Hugo*

　　21. To harbor a dragon within oneself is both a torment and a pleasure.

　　22. A flirtatious woman and a learned man are like two neighbors. Their relationship can be seen in their self-important attitudes.
　　—The Man Who Laughs

　　23. The first hunger of mankind is ignorance.
　　—Les Misérables
　　24. I would rather forge my own path than seek the favor of the powerful.
　　25. We are all blind. The stingy are blind; they see only gold, not wealth. The extravagant are blind; they see only the beginning, not the end. The flirtatious woman is blind; she cannot see her wrinkles. The learned man is blind; he cannot see his own ignorance. The honest man is blind; he cannot see the villain. The villain is blind; he cannot see God. God is also blind. When He created the world, He did not see that the devil had infiltrated as well. I am also blind; I only know how to talk and talk, without seeing that you are all deaf.
　　—We Are All Blind
　　26. Success is an ugly thing. Because its illusion makes people equate it with achievement. This is how people are fooled by history.
　　—Les Misérables
　　27. The greatest man is also the most tolerant of humiliation.
　　—Lui Blas
　　28. I know I'm ugly, and I don't care if I'm stoned, but it makes me sad that you're afraid.
　　—The Hunchback of Notre Dame
　　29. He understood that people need emotions; he knew that life without warmth and love is like a dry wheel, rattling and creaking as it turns.
　　—The Hunchback of Notre Dame
　　29. To write poetry on the theme of the human heart, even if it only describes one person, even if it only describes the most insignificant person, will still merge all epics into a higher and final epic. The human heart is a mixture of delusion, greed, and scheming; it is a crucible of dreams, a wellspring of shameful thoughts, a den of treachery, and a battlefield of desire. At certain moments, through the pale face of a thinking person, one can observe what lies behind, the heart, and the hidden. Beneath the outward silence lies the struggle of giants in Homer's epics, the mixture of dragons and serpents and hordes of ghosts in Milton's poems, and the spiraling visions in Dante's poems. This boundless burden that each person carries, though unfathomable, is always used to measure the desires of their mind and the actions of their life, and always results in great disappointment.
　　— *Les Misérables*
　　30. Loneliness can make a man capable, or it can make him clumsy.
　　— *The Toilers of the Sea*
　　31. Beneath every tombstone lies a novel.

　　32. A victory that aligns with progress deserves the applause of the people. But a heroic defeat deserves even more sympathy. One is magnificent, the other sublime.
　　— *Les Misérables*
　　33. To get the audience to wait patiently, you must first tell them that the performance will begin soon.
　　— *The Hunchback of Notre Dame*
　　34. Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.
　　Music expresses what is unspeakable yet must be said.

　　35. Ugliness lies beside beauty, deformity near grace, grotesqueness hides behind sublimity; beauty and ugliness coexist, light and darkness are intertwined.
　　— *The Hunchback of Notre Dame*

　　36. To reduce the whole world to one person, and to expand that one person to be like God—that is love.
　　— *Les Misérables*

　　37. Caution is far more powerful than boldness.
　　38. Amidst the incredible variations in the exteriors of those buildings, there still exists order and consistency. The trunk remains unchanged, but the leaves fall and grow.
　　— *The Hunchback of Notre Dame*

　　39. You can know what my love for you is like—it is fire, it is molten lead, it is a thousand knives piercing my heart!
　　— *The Hunchback of Notre Dame*

　　40. Human wisdom holds three keys: one unlocks numbers, one unlocks letters, and one unlocks musical notes. Knowledge, thought, and imagination reside within them.

　　41. The spirit, like humanity, fears emptiness. To fill the void, humanity fills it with love; the spirit often fills it with hatred.
　　—The Man Who Laughs
　　42. In our dark society, climbing upwards is, undeniably, a slow, downward corrosive process.
　　—Les Misérables
　　43. The greatest happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved.
　　44. He was naturally unsociable yet very talkative, wanting to avoid everyone yet needing to speak with others, so he resorted to talking to himself to resolve this contradiction. Anyone who has experienced loneliness knows that talking to oneself is perfectly normal; it's tingling to keep things to oneself. Posting online is also a way to vent. Speaking loudly to oneself is like conversing with the gods within.
　　—The Man Who Laughs

　　45. He was just playing around in love, but she was deeply in love.
　　—Les Misérables
　　46. Those who waste their youth will find their youth fading and life abandoning them.
　　—Victor Hugo
　　Victor Hugo: Inspiration, Youth, Philosophy
　　History and philosophy bear many eternal responsibilities, and at the same time, simple responsibilities.
　　—Victor Hugo
　　Responsibility, History, Simplicity, Inspiration