Was it possible that Napoleon should win the battle of Waterloo? We answer, No! Why? Because of Wellington? Because of Blucher? 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!
AUTHOR QUOTES
Quotes by Victor Hugo
Explore 31 verified and sourced quotes attributed to Victor Hugo. Open any quote for its dedicated page, source details and related topics.
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Selected quotes by Victor Hugo
The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. It is marvelous, yet simple.
Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.
Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.
When a woman is talking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes.
He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said.
The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.
Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.
Life is the flower for which love is the honey.
Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age.
Initiative is doing the right thing without being told.
Perseverance, secret of all triumphs.
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.
When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age.
All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.
When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right.
Virtue has a veil, vice a mask.
Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant.
To love beauty is to see light.
To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do.
The mountains, the forest, and the sea, render men savage; they develop the fierce, but yet do not destroy the human.
There are fathers who do not love their children; there is no grandfather who does not adore his grandson.
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