Quotes about Life
I desire to forget life. Life is a hideous invention of I know not whom. It lasts no time at all, and is worth nothing. One breaks one's neck in living. Life is a theatre set in which there are but few practicable entrances. Happiness is an antique reliquary painted on one side only. Ecclesiastes says: 'All is vanity.' I agree with that good man, who never existed, perhaps.
— Victor Hugo
Their own destiny is a far-off thing to them ... One declines, descends, trickles away, even crumbles away, and yet is hardly conscious of it one's self. It always ends, it is true, in an awakening, but the awakening is tardy. In the meantime, it seems as though we held ourselves neutral in the game which is going on between our happiness and our unhappiness. We are the stake, and we look on at the game with indifference.
— Victor Hugo
Thenardier had just passed his fiftieth birthday; Madame Thenardier was approaching her forties, which is equivalent to fifty in a woman; so that there existed a balance of age between husband and wife.
— Victor Hugo
If there did not exist some one who loved, the sun would become extinct.
— Victor Hugo
Man finds prejudices beside his cradle, puts them from him a little in the course of his career, and often, alas! takes to them again in his old age. During this journey in 1825
— Victor Hugo
When one is at the end of one's life, to die means to go away; when one is at the beginning of it, to go away means to die.
— Victor Hugo
Death belongs only to God. What right have men to lay hands on a thing so unknown?
— Victor Hugo
There is one thing sadder than to see one's children die; it is to see them leading an evil life.
— Victor Hugo
When both are sincere and good, no men so penetrate each other, and so amalgamate with each other, as an old priest and an old soldier. At bottom, the man is the same. The one has devoted his life to his country here below, the other to his country on high; that is the only difference.
— Victor Hugo
All the birds that fly hold the thread of infinity in their claws. Germination
— Victor Hugo
Alas! What are all these lives driven willy-nilly? Where are they going? Why are they like this? He who knows the answer to that, sees the darkness as a whole. He is alone. His name is God.
— Victor Hugo
Death belongs only to God. By what right to men tamper with a thing so unknowable?
— Victor Hugo