Victor Hugo

I don’t mind what Congress does, as long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses.

Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.

An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise.

A creditor is worse than a slave-owner; for the master owns only your person, but a creditor owns your dignity, and can command it.

One can resist the invasion of an army, but one cannot resist the invasion of ideas.

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved – loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

I want to be free; to escape. I use my pen as oars; the paper as my boat. I fill these pages to keep me afloat. I ride the waves of turmoil, so I can paddle away to calmer seas.

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.

The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest.

We should come home from adventures and perils and discoveries with new experiences and character.

A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.

It is possible to have a strong self-love without any self-satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent which is the more intense because one’s own little core of egoistic sensibility is a supreme care.

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. The conviction of the rich that the poor are happier is no more foolish than the conviction of the poor that the rich are.

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

The Country is both the Philosopher’s Garden and his Library, in which he Reads and Contemplates the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God.

Most people think that aging is irreversible and we know that there are mechanisms even in the human machinery that allow for the reversal of aging, through correction of diet, through anti-oxidants, through removal of toxins from the body, through exercise, through yoga and breathing techniques, and through meditation.

Society is infested by persons who, seeing that the sentiments please, counterfeit the expression of them. These we call sentimentalists – talkers who mistake the description for the thing, saying for having.

One of the most attractive things about the flowers is their beautiful reserve.

Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years at least.

A drunkard would not give money to sober people. He said they would only eat it, and buy clothes and send their children to school with it.