Victor Hugo - Time Quotes

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M. Mabeuf's political opinion was a passionate fondness for plants, and a still greater one for books. He had, like everybody else, his termination in ist, without which nobody could have lived in those times, but he was neither a royalist, nor a Bonapartist, nor a chartist, nor an Orleanist, nor an anarchist; he was an old-bookist.

Victor Hugo
To rove about, musing, that is to say loitering, is, for a philosopher, a good way of spending time, especially in that kind of mock rurality, ugly but odd, and partaking of two natures, which surrounds certain large cities, particularly Paris.

Victor Hugo
Claude - saddened, his faith in human affection shaken - threw himself with frenzied ardour into the arms of science, that sister who at least never laughs at you in derision, and who always repays you, albeit at times in somewhat light coin, for the care you have lavished on her.

Victor Hugo
Primitive times are lyrical, ancient times epical, modern times dramatic. The ode sings of eternity, the epic imparts solemnity tohistory, the drama depicts life. The characteristic of the first poetry is ingeniousness, of the second, simplicity, of the third, truth.

Victor Hugo
For true poetry, complete poetry, consists in the harmony of contraries. Hence, it is time to say aloud--and it is here above allthat exceptions prove the rule--that everything that exists in nature exists in art.

Victor Hugo
Each of our passions, even love, has a stomach that must not be overloaded. We must in everything write the word 'finis' in time; we must restrain ourselves, when it becomes urgent; we must draw the bolt on the appetite, play a fantasia on the violin, then break the strings with our own hand. The Wise man is he who knows when and how to stop.

Victor Hugo
To rise at six, to dine at ten,
To sup at six, to sleep at ten,
Makes a man live for ten times ten.

Victor Hugo
Nothing can be sadder or more profound than to see a thousand things for the first and last time.

Victor Hugo
The beginning as well as the end of all his thoughts was hatred of human law, that hatred which, if it be not checked in its growth by some providential event, becomes, in a certain time, hatred of society, then hatred of the human race, and then hatred of creation, and reveals itself by a vague and incessant desire to injure some living being, it matters not who.

Victor Hugo
The convent, which belongs to the West as it does to the East, to antiquity as it does to the present time, to Buddhism and Muhammadanism as it does to Christianity, is one of the optical devices whereby man gains a glimpse of infinity.

Victor Hugo
From the oyster to the eagle, from the swine to the tiger, all animals are to be found in men and each of them exists in some man, sometimes several at a time. Animals are nothing but the portrayal of our virtues and vices made manifest to our eyes, the visible reflections of our souls. God displays them to us to give us food for thought.

Victor Hugo
However powerful one may be, whether one laughs or weeps, none can make thee speak, none can open thy hand before the time, O mute phantom, our shadow! specter always masked, ever at our side, called To-morrow!

Victor Hugo
I am in the night. There is a being who has gone away and carried the heavens with her. Oh! to be laid side by side in the same tomb, hand clasped in hand, and from time to time, in the darkness, to caress a finger gently, that would suffice for my eternity.

Victor Hugo
Was it possible that Napoleon should win the battle of Waterloo? We answer, No! Why? Because of Wellington? Because of Blücher? No! Because of God! For Bonaparte to conquer at Waterloo was not the law of the nineteenth century. It was time that this vast man should fall. He had been impeached before the Infinite! He had vexed God! Waterloo was not a battle. It was the change of front of the Universe!

Victor Hugo
Science is continually correcting what it has said. Fertile corrections...science is a ladder...poetry is a winged flight...An artistic masterpiece exists for all time...Dante does not efface Homer.

Victor Hugo
Thus, during those nineteen years of torture and slavery, did this soul rise and fall at the same time. Light entered on the one side, and darkness on the other.

Victor Hugo
Take away time is money, and what is left of England? take away cotton is king, and what is left of America?

Victor Hugo
I like the laughter that opens the lips and the heart, that shows at the same time pearls and the soul.

Victor Hugo
If she gives me all her time it is because I have all her heart.

Victor Hugo
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.

Victor Hugo