Victor Hugo

"The poor don't know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity."

"It is not enough to have eyes to see; we must have vision."

"Armies cannot stop an idea whose time has come."

"Love is a great beautifier."

"Knowledge is power, said someone to knowledge."

"The days we live through with other people are the ones that make us human."

"There are thoughts which are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the posture of the body, the soul is on its knees."

"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity—these are not just political ideals."

"A man with convictions is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away."

"Everyday courage has few witnesses. But yours is no less noble because no drum beats for you and no crowds shout your name."

"The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls."

"I have witnessed the softening of the hardest hearts by charity."

"One cannot tear out any single page of his life, but he can throw the whole book in the fire."

"Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers."

"There is nothing like a dream to create the future."

"The supreme unhappiness is to be deprived of self-esteem."

"The powerful cannot be unaware of the misery of the weak."

"All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle."

"The human heart has hidden treasures, in secret kept, in silence sealed."

"The greatest delight of the writer is to be understood by his readers."

"Wisdom is a sacred communion."

"When woman is happy, man is happy."

"Keep your eyes open to your mercies. The man who forgets to be thankful has fallen asleep in life."

"Reason can teach us to call virtue the acts which lead to happiness and vice those which lead to misery."

"Pity is the virtue of the law; kindness is the virtue of the man."

"He who opens a school door closes a prison."

"I feel in myself a peace above all earthly dignities, a still and quiet conscience."

"Tomorrow is an important word in the mouth of no man who is not honest today."

"The infinite is the favourite study of every powerful mind."

"Even the night thinks that the day is far away."