Victor Hugo

"A library implies an act of faith."

"Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees."

"Common sense is in spite of, not as the result of education."

"Death has its revelations: the great sorrows which open the heart open the mind as well; light comes to us with our grief. As for me, I have faith; I believe in a future life. How could I do otherwise? My daughter was a soul; I saw this soul. I touched it, so to speak."

"Every diminution of the liberty of the press is followed by a diminution of civilization. Wherever we see the freedom of the press interfered with, there we see the nutrition of the human family interrupted."

"In the French language, there is a great gulf between prose and poetry; in English, there is hardly any difference. It is a splendid privilege of the great literary languages Greek, Latin, and French that they possess a prose. English has not this privilege. There is no prose in English."

"Joy's smile is much closer to tears than laughter."

"Our life dreams the Utopia. Our death achieves the Ideal."

"Peace is the virtue of civilization. War is its crime."

"People do not lack strength; they lack will."

"Rhyme, that enslaved queen, that supreme charm of our poetry, that creator of our meter."

"Society is a republic. When an individual tries to lift themselves above others, they are dragged down by the mass, either by ridicule or slander."

"The drama is complete poetry. The ode and the epic contain it only in germ; it contains both of them in a state of high development, and epitomizes both."

"To love is to act."

"Toleration is the best religion."

"We say that slavery has vanished from European civilization, but this is not true. Slavery still exists, but now it applies only to women and its name is prostitution."