Victor Hugo

True or false, that which is said of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all in their destinies, as that which they do.

It is upon this word that this book is founded.

Houses are like the human beings who inhabit them.

This humble soul loved, and that was all.

Gringoire saw only profiles.

No one is bound to be a sorcerer; but when a man is one, he ought not to shirk the duties of his position.

She received the name as she received the water from the clouds upon her brow when it rained.

But by night he was deprived of his most formidable weapon, his ugliness.

The perilous abyss is full of these snares; beware, therefore, of its proffered aids.

When he was pleased with himself, he permitted himself a pinch of snuff. Therein lay his connection with humanity.

The Cour des Miracles was, in fact, merely a dram-shop; but a brigand’s dram-shop, reddened quite as much with blood as with wine.

A stout heart may be ruined in fortune, but not in spirit.

She resembled rather something on the point of soaring away than something on the point of dying.

Each wave of time contributes its alluvium, each race deposits its layer on the monument, each individual brings his stone.

With Déruchette impressions vanished like the melted snow.

Thus does progress proceed. There is no such thing as a bad tool for that workman.

The Sainte-Geneviève of M. Soufflot is certainly the finest Savoy cake that has ever been made in stone.

The pupil of his eye received the impression of a face, and kept it like a portrait.

A little girl without a doll is almost as unhappy, and quite as impossible, as a woman without children.

It is like a skull which still has holes for the eyes, but no longer sight.