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There have been in this century only one great man and one great thing: Napoleon and liberty. For want of the great man, let us have the great thing.

Victor Hugo

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Victor Hugo
Age: 83 †
Born: 1802
Born: February 26
Died: 1885
Died: May 22
Drawer
Essayist
Illustrator
Librettist
Memoirist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Politician
Travel Writer
Writer
Besac
Victor Marie Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo
Victor Marie
Comte Hugo
Napoleon
Century
Liberty
Great
Thing
Men

More quotes by Victor Hugo

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As for methods of prayer, all of them are good as long as they are sincere.
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In saying no to progress, it is not the future which they condemn, but themselves. They give themselves a melancholy disease they inoculate themselves with the past. There is but one way of refusing tomorrow, that is to die.
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Superstition, bigotry and prejudice, ghosts though they are, cling tenaciously to life they are shades armed with tooth and claw. They must be grappled with unceasingly, for it is a fateful part of human destiny that it is condemned to wage perpetual war against ghosts. A shade is not easily taken by the throat and destroyed.
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There is a secret drawer in every woman's heart.
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The reduction of the universe to the compass of a single being, and the extension of a single being until it reaches God - that is love. Love is the salute of the angels to the stars. How sad is the heart when rendered sad by love! How great is the void created by the absence of the being who alone fills the world.
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The spirit of God, like the sun, always gives all its light at once. The spirit of man resembles the pale moon, which has its phases, its absences and its returns, its lucidity and its spots, its fullness and its disappearance, which borrows all its light from the rays of the sun, and which still dares to intercept them on occasion.
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I think, therefore I doubt.
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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.
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We say that slavery has vanished from European civilization, but this is not true. Slavery still exists, but now it applies only to women and its name is prostitution.
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Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.
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The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.
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The persistence of an all-absorbing idea is terrible.
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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.
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For sight is woman-like and shuns the old.
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When, like an Emir of tyrannic power, Sirius appears, and on the horizon black Bids countless stars pursue their mighty track.
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Civil war.... What did the words mean? Was there any such thing as foreign war? Was not all warfare between men warfare between brothers?
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Ah! There you are! he exclaimed, looking at Jean Valjean. I'm so glad to see you. Well, but how is this? I gave you the candlesticks too, which are of silver like the rest, and for which you can certainly get two hundred francs. Why did you not carry them away with your forks and spoons?
Victor Hugo
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Often the losing of a battle leads to the winning of progress. Less glory but greater liberty: the drum is silent and the voices of reason can be heard.
Victor Hugo
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If he had had all Peru in his pocket, he would certainly have given it to this dancer but Gringoire had not Peru in his pocket and besides, America was not yet discovered. (p. 66)
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Kings are for nations in their swaddling-clothes: France has attained her majority.
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