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Duty
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It is not enough for us to prostrate ourselves under the tree which is Creation, and to contemplate its tremendous branches filled with stars. We have a duty to perform, to work upon the human soul, to defend the mystery against the miracle, to worship the incomprehensible while rejecting the absurd; to accept, in the inexplicable, only what is necessary; to dispel the superstitions that surround religion --to rid God of His Maggots.
-Victor Hugo
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Education
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He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
-Victor Hugo
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Enlightenment, The
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In this world, which is so plainly the antechamber of another, there are no happy men. The true division of humanity is between those who live in light and those who live in darkness. Our aim must be to diminish the number of the latter and increase the number of the former. That is why we demand education and knowledge.
-Victor Hugo
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Exaggeration
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It is the essence of truth that it is never excessive. Why should it exaggerate? There is that which should be destroyed and that which should be simply illuminated and studied. How great is the force of benevolent and searching examination! We must not resort to the flame where only light is required.
-Victor Hugo
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Excess
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Short as life is, we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time.
-Victor Hugo
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Faith
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-Victor Hugo
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Father
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There are fathers who do not love their children, but there is no grandfather who does not adore his grandson.
-Victor Hugo
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Freedom
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Liberation is not deliverance.
-Victor Hugo
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Genius
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Genius is a promontory jutting out into the infinite.
-Victor Hugo
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The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.
-Victor Hugo
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Goodness
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We are the children of our own deeds.
-Victor Hugo
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Gossip
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For prying into any human affairs, non are equal to those whom it does not concern.
-Victor Hugo
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Greatness & Great Things
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There is a sacred horror about everything grand. It is easy to admire mediocrity and hills; but whatever is too lofty, a genius as well as a mountain, an assembly as well as a masterpiece, seen too near, is appalling.
-Victor Hugo
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Guilt
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If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.
-Victor Hugo, Les Mis
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Happiness
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Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved.
-Victor Hugo
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Heroes/Heroism
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Life, misfortunes, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are battlefields which have their heroes; obscure heroes, sometimes greater than the illustrious heroes.
-Victor Hugo, Les Mis, 1862
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History
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One cannot be a good historian of the outward, visible world without giving some thought to the hidden, private life of ordinary people; and on the other hand one cannot be a good historian of this inner life without taking into account outward events where these are relevant. They are two orders of fact which reflect each other, which are always linked and which sometimes provoke each other.
-Victor Hugo
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Humanity
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Close by the Rights of Man, at the least set beside them, are the Rights of the Spirit.
-Victor Hugo
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Mankind is not a circle with a single center but an ellipse with two focal points of which facts are one and ideas the other.
-Victor Hugo
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Ideas
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There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.
-Victor Hugo
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Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.
-Victor Hugo
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A stand can be made against invasion by an army; no stand can be made against invasion by an idea.
fr.: On resiste a l'invasion des armees; on ne resiste pas a l'invasion des idees
-Victor Hugo, Histoire d'un Crime (written 1851-2, published 1877) pt. 5, sect 10
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Infinity
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Whenever we encounter the Infinite in man, however imperfectly understood, we treat it with respect. Whether in the synagogue, the mosque, the pagoda, or the wigwam, there is a hideous aspect which we execrate and a sublime aspect which we venerate . So great a subject for spiritual contemplation, such measureless dreaming -- the echo of God on the human wall!
-Victor Hugo
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Irony
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Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization.
-Victor Hugo
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Language
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To rescue from oblivion even a fragment of a language which men have used and which is in danger of being lost --that is to say, one of the elements, whether good or bad, which have shaped and complicated civilization --is to extend the scope of social observation and to serve civilization.
-Victor Hugo
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Books by and about Victor Hugo