Hugo Quotes

“One drop of wine is enough to redden a whole glass of water.”
― Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

“It just goes to show that if you tell a woman her only skill is to be desirable, she will believe you.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“She walked to the rear door and took out a bobby pin from her pocket. Hugo watched as she fiddled with the pin inside the lock until it clicked and the door opened. "How did you learn to do that?" asked Hugo. "Books," answered Isabelle.”
― Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret

“You could make me say it again," he whispered. "Make me say it always. Make me say it so often that you never have cause to doubt. I love you.”
― Courtney Milan, The Governess Affair

“to cause constellations of victories to flash forth at each instant from the zenith of the centuries, to make the French Empire a pendant to the Roman Empire, to be the great nation and to give birth to the grand army, to conquer the world twice, by conquest and by dazzling, that is sublime; and what greater thing is there?’

‘To be free’, said Combeferre.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Let us not, however, exaggerate our power. Whatever man does, the great lines of creation persist; the supreme mass does not depend on man. He has power over the detail, not over the whole. And it is right that this should be so. The Whole is providential. Its laws pass over our head. What we do goes no farther than the surface. Man clothes or unclothes the earth; clearing a forest is like taking off a garment. But to slow down the rotation of the globe on its axis, to accelerate the course of the globe on its orbit, to add or subtract a fathom on he earth's daily journey of 718,000 leagues around the sun, to modify the precession of the equinoxes, to eliminate one drop of rain--never! What is on high remains on high. Man can change the climate, but not the seasons Just try and make the moon revolve anywhere but in the ecliptic!

Dreamers, some of them illustrious, have dreamed of restoring perpetual spring to the earth. The extreme seasons, summer and winter, are produced by the excess of the inclination of the earth's axis over the place of the ecliptic of which we have just spoken. In order to eliminate the seasons it would be necessary only to straighten this axis. Nothing could be simpler. Just plant a stake on the Pole and drive it in to the center of the globe; attach a chain to it; find a base outside the earth; have 10 billion teams, each of 10 billion horses, and get them to pull. THe axis will straighten up, ad you will have your spring. As you can see, an easy task.

We must look elsewhere for Eden. Spring is good; but freedom and justice are beter. Eden is moral, not material.

To be free and just depends on ourselves.”
― Victor Hugo, The Toilers of the Sea

“To breathe Paris is to preserve one's soul.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Dream no small dreams. They have no power to stir the hearts of men.”
― Victor Hugo

“If no one loved, the sun would go out.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“We repeat, these hybrid constructions are not the least interesting for the artist, the antiquary and the historian. They make us aware to what extent architecture is a primitive thing, demonstrating as they do, like the cyclopean remains, the pyramids of Egypt, or the gigantic Hindu pagodas, that architecture's greatest products are less individual than social creations; the offspring of nations in labour rather than the outpouring of men of genius; the deposit let behind by a nation; the accumulation of the centuries; the residue from the successive evaporations of human society; in short, a kind of formation. Each wave of time lays down its alluvium, each race deposits its own stratum on the monument, each individual contributes his stone. Thus do the beavers, and the bees; and thus does man.”
― Victor Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris (REEDIT)

“Mulle meeldib ette kujutada, et maailm on nagu üks hiigelsuur masin. Tead, masinatel pole kunagi ühtegi üleliigset osa. Neil on täpselt ettenähtud arv kindlat tüüpi osasid, mida need vajavad. Nii et terve maailm on üks suur masin, siis pean ma siin ju mingil põhjusel olema. Ja see tähendab, et ka sina oled siin samamoodi mingil põhjusel.”
― Selznick, Brian

“The devotion of one man had given strength and courage to all.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“I bear the Russian man no ill. A Stanislav has as much right to walk God's earth as does a Stanley.”
― Kevin Ansbro, The Minotaur's Son & Other Wild Tales

“The gamin Gavroche puts in a strong plea for mercy, and his sister Eponine, if Hugo had chosen to take more trouble with her, might have been a great, and is actually the most interesting, character. But Cosette—the cosseted Cosette—Hugo did not know our word or he would have seen the danger—is merely a pretty and rather selfish little doll, and her precious lover Marius is almost ineffable.”
― George Saintsbury

“After a pause he added: "My friends remember this:There is no such thing as a weed and no such thing as a bad man.There are only bad cultivators".”
― Victor Hugo

“Hugo planned a five-course meal: smoked duck, oyster stew, roast beef with mashed yams, a salad of apples with beets and blue cheese, then chocolate banana cream pie. Rich, rich, and richer still. Ben made pitchers of martinis and set aside thirty-five bottles of a tried-and-true Napa cabernet, pure purple velvet, and an Oregonian pinot gris, grassy and effervescent.”
― Julia Glass, The Whole World Over

“Quando la terra soffre per qualche eccesso, l'ombra ha gemiti misteriosi che l'abisso ode.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Das Lachen ist die Sonne, die aus dem menschlichen Antlitz den Winter vertreibt.”
― Victor Hugo

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“Hugo est surréaliste quand il n’est pas bête.”
― André Breton, Manifestes du surréalisme
tags: surrealism, victor-hugo
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“Aucun des sophismes de la folie, - la folie qu'on enferme, - n'a été oublié par moi : je pourrais les redire tous, je tiens le système.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Une saison en enfer & Le bateau ivre: A season in hell & The drunken boat
tags: madness
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Hugo est surréaliste quand il n'est pas bête.”
― André Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism

“Hugo est surréaliste quand il n'est pas bête.”
― André Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism

“11
— I have explained where Wagner belongs—not in the history of music. What does he signify nevertheless in that history? The emergence of the actor in music: a capital event that invites thought, perhaps also fear. In a formula: "Wagner and Liszt."— Never yet has the integrity of musicians, their "authenticity," been put to the test so dangerously. One can grasp it with one's very hands: great success, success with the masses no longer sides with those who are authentic,—one has to be an actor to achieve that!— Victor Hugo and Richard Wagner—they both prove one and the same thing: that in declining civilizations, wherever the mob is allowed to decide, genuineness becomes superfluous, prejudicial, unfavorable. The actor, alone, can still kindle great enthusiasm.— And thus it is his golden age which is now dawning—his and that of all those who are in any way related to him. With drums and fifes, Wagner marches at the head of all artists in declamation, in display and virtuosity. He began by convincing the conductors of orchestras, the scene-shifters and stage-singers, not to forget the orchestra:—he "redeemed" them from monotony .... The movement that Wagner created has spread even to the land of knowledge: whole sciences pertaining to music are rising slowly, out of centuries of scholasticism. As an example of what I mean, let me point more particularly to Riemann's [Hugo Riemann (1849-1919): music theoretician] services to rhythmic; he was the first who called attention to the leading idea in punctuation—even for music (unfortunately he did so with a bad word; he called it "phrasing"). All these people, and I say it with gratitude, are the best, the most respectable among Wagner's admirers—they have a perfect right to honor Wagner. The same instinct unites them with one another; in him they recognize their highest type, and since he has inflamed them with his own ardor they feel themselves transformed into power, even into great power. In this quarter, if anywhere, Wagner's influence has really been beneficial. Never before has there been so much thinking, willing, and industry in this sphere. Wagner endowed all these artists with a new conscience: what they now exact and obtain from themselves, they had never extracted before Wagner's time—before then they had been too modest. Another spirit prevails on the stage since Wagner rules there: the most difficult things are expected, blame is severe, praise very scarce—the good and the excellent have become the rule. Taste is no longer necessary, nor even is a good voice. Wagner is sung only with ruined voices: this has a more "dramatic" effect. Even talent is out of the question. Expressiveness at all costs, which is what the Wagnerian ideal—the ideal of décadence—demands, is hardly compatible with talent. All that is required for this is virtue—that is to say, training, automatism, "self-denial." Neither taste, voices, nor gifts: Wagner's stage requires one thing only—Teutons! ... Definition of the Teuton: obedience and long legs ... It is full of profound significance that the arrival of Wagner coincides in time with the arrival of the "Reich": both actualities prove the very same thing: obedience and long legs.— Never has obedience been better, never has commanding. Wagnerian conductors in particular are worthy of an age that posterity will call one day, with awed respect, the classical age of war. Wagner understood how to command; in this, too, he was the great teacher. He commanded as the inexorable will to himself, as lifelong self-discipline: Wagner who furnishes perhaps the greatest example of self-violation in the history of art (—even Alfieri, who in other respects is his next-of-kin, is outdone by him. The note of a Torinese).

12
The insight that our actors are more deserving of admiration than ever does not imply that they are any less dangerous ... But who could still doubt what I want,—what are the three demands for which my my love of art has compelled me?”
― Nietszche

“so by way of providing an intellectual first-aid kit, I would suggest the following:
Do not look for familiar landmarks-you won't find them; you are not entering the backyard of your neighbors, but a universe you did not know existed.
Do not look for familiar faces - you are about to meet a race of giants, who might have and ought to have been your neighbors.
Do not say that these giants are "unreal" because you have never seen them before - check your eyesight, not Hugo's, and your premises, not his; it was not his purpose to show you what you had seen a thousand times before.
Do not say the actions of these giants are "impossible" because they are heroic, noble, intelligent, beautiful - remember that the cowardly, the depraved, the mindless, the ugly are not all that is possible to man.
Do not say that this glowing new universe is an "escape" - you will witness harder, more demanding, more tragic battles than any you have seen on poolroom street corners;
Do not say that "life is not like that" - ask yourself WHOSE life?”
― Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto

“Spesso ci sono più cose naufragate in fondo a
un’anima che in fondo al mare.”
― Victor Hugo