Victor Hugo Notre Dame Quotes

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Love is like a tree: it grows by itself, roots itself deeply in our being and continues to flourish over a heart in ruin. The inexplicable fact is that the blinder it is, the more tenacious it is. It is never stronger than when it is completely unreasonable.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
Nothing makes a man so adventurous as an empty pocket.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame)
When you get an idea into your head you find it in everything.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
I wanted to see you again, touch you, know who you were, see if I would find you identical with the ideal image of you which had remained with me and perhaps shatter my dream with the aid of reality. -Claude Frollo
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame)
Spira, spera. (breathe, hope)
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
A one-eyed man is much more incomplete than a blind man, for he knows what it is that's lacking.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
mothers are often fondest of the child which has caused them the greatest pain.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
He reached for his pocket, and found there, only reality
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
One drop of wine is enough to redden a whole glass of water.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
Do you know what friendship is?' he asked. 'Yes,' replied the gypsy; 'it is to be brother and sister; two souls which touch without mingling, two fingers on one hand.' 'And love?' pursued Gringoire. 'Oh! love!' said she, and her voice trembled, and her eye beamed. 'That is to be two and to be but one. A man and a woman mingled into one angel. It is heaven.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
Dost thou understand? I love thee!" he cried again. "What love!" said the unhappy girl with a shudder. He resumed,--"The love of a damned soul. a
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
You would have imagined her at one moment a maniac, at another a queen.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
The saints were his friends, and blessed him; the monsters were his friends, and guarded him.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
He left her. She was dissatisfied with him. He had preferred to incur her anger rather than cause her pain. He had kept all the pain for himself.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
At the moment when her eyes closed, when all feeling vanished in her, she thought that she felt a touch of fire imprinted on her lips, a kiss more burning than the red-hot iron of the executioner.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
by making himself a priest made himself a demon.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
The greatest products of architecture are less the works of individuals than of society; rather the offspring of a nation's effort, than the inspired flash of a man of genius...
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
To a gargoyle on the ramparts of Notre Dame as Esmeralda rides off with Gringoire Quasimodo says. "Why was I not made of stone like thee?
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
But alas, if I have not maintained my victory, it is God's fault for not making man and the devil of equal strength.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
His judgement demonstrates that one can be a genius and understand nothing of an art that is not one's own.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
If he had had all Peru in his pocket, he would certainly have given it to this dancer; but Gringoire had not Peru in his pocket; and besides, America was not yet discovered. (p. 66)
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
Large, heavy, ragged black clouds hung like crape hammocks beneath the starry cope of the night. You would have said that they were the cobwebs of the firmament.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame)
The owl goes not into the nest of the lark.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame)
The women laughed and wept; the crowd stamped their feet enthusiastically, for at that moment Quasimodo was really beautiful. He was handsome — this orphan, this foundling, this outcast.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame)
He found that man needs affection, that life without a warming love is but a dry wheel, creaking and grating as it turns.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
When a man understands the art of seeing, he can trace the spirit of an age and the features of a king even in the knocker on a door.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
I bear the dungeon within me; within me is winter, ice, and despair; I have darkness in my soul.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
For love is like a tree; it grows of itself; it send its roots deep into our being, and often continues to grow green over a heart in ruins.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
There are plenty who regard a wall behind which something is happening as a very curious thing.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
Oh! Everything I loved!
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
Love is like a tree: it shoots of itself; it strikes it's roots deeply into our whole being, and frequently continues to put forth green leaves over a heart in ruins. And there is this unaccountable circumstance attending it, that the blinder the passion the more tenacious it is. Never is it stronger than when it is most unreasonable.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame)
Excess of grief, like excess of joy is a violent thing which lasts but a short time. The heart of man cannot remain long in one extremity.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame)
He therefore turned to mankind only with regret. His cathedral was enough for him. It was peopled with marble figures of kings, saints and bishops who at least did not laugh in his face and looked at him with only tranquillity and benevolence. The other statues, those of monsters and demons, had no hatred for him – he resembled them too closely for that. It was rather the rest of mankind that they jeered at. The saints were his friends and blessed him; the monsters were his friends and kept watch over him. He would sometimes spend whole hours crouched before one of the statues in solitary conversation with it. If anyone came upon him then he would run away like a lover surprised during a serenade.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
This will destroy that. The book will kill the edifice.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
Look not at the face, young girl, look at the heart. The heart of a handsome young man is often deformed. There are hearts in which love does not keep. Young girl, the pine is not beautiful; it is not beautiful like the poplar, but it keeps its foliage in winter.
Victor Hugo (Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Adapted and dramatized in 2 acts)
When a man does wrong, he should do all the wrong he can; it is madness to stop half-way in crime!
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
I'd rather be the head of a fly than the tail of a lion.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
Homo homini monstrum
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
My misfortune is that I still resemble a man too much. I should liked to be wholly a beast like that goat. - Quasimodo
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
So you're giving up? That's it? Okay, okay. We'll leave you alone, Quasimodo. We just thought, maybe you're made up of something much stronger.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
He had, they said, tasted in succession all the apples of the tree of knowledge, and, whether from hunger or disgust, had ended by tasting the forbidden fruit.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
Phoebus de Chateaupers likewise came to a 'tragic end': he married.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
a mother who loses her child can no longer believe in God
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
Where women are honored, the divinities are pleased. Where they are despised, it is useless to pray to God.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
There are moments when the hands of a woman possess super human force.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
A fall from such a height is rarely straight downwards.
Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo n’est pas uniquement reconnu pour ses œuvres, cet intellectuel engagé et influent est reconnu surtout pour sa carrière politique très importante et son influence énorme sur l’histoire de la France.
Mouloud Benzadi
Just imagine! In the early nineteenth century, this cathedral was in such a state of disrepair that the city considered tearing it down. Luckily for us, Victor Hugo heard about the plans to destroy it and wrote The Hunchback of Notre-Dame to raise awareness of its glorious history. And, by golly, did it work! Parisians campaigned to save it, and the building was repaired and polished to the pristine state you find today.
Stephanie Perkins (Anna and the French Kiss (Anna and the French Kiss, #1))
For dogs we kings should have lions, and for cats, tigers. The great benefits a crown.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
Paris, viewed from the towers of Notre Dame in the cool dawn of a summer morning, is a delectable and a magnificent sight; and the Paris of that period must have been eminently so.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
Dost thou understand? I love thee!" he cried again. "What love!" said the unhappy girl with a shudder. He resumed,--"The love of a damned soul.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
Victor Hugo continues to be popular today not because of his multivolume works, which people may never have time or patience to read, but rather because of his unique experiences, his political activities and his immense influence on French history.
Mouloud Benzadi
You asked me why I saved you. You have forgotten a villain who tried to carry you off one night,- a villain to whom the very next day you brought relief upon their infamous pillory. A drop of water and a little pity are more than my whole life can ever repay. You have forgotten that villain; but he remembers." ~Quasimodo to Esmeralda~
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
إن القلب البشري لا يستطيع أن يحتوي إلا علي كمية محدودة من اليأس ومن ثم ففي وسع البحر أن يمر فوق الإسفنجة دون أن يضيف إلي مائها دمعة واحدة بعد أن تبتل وتمتلئ به
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
Great edifices, like great mountains, are the work of the ages.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
إن الحياة التى تخلو من العاطفة ليست غير حركة جافة صارخة ممزقة
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
It is like a skull, which still has holes for eyes, but no longer sight.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
if she had not been a gypsy, and if he had not been a priest
Victor Hugo
I never realized my ugliness till now. When I compared myself with you, I pity myself indeed, poor unhappy monster that I am! I must seem to you like some awful beast, eh? You,-you are a sunbeam, a drop of dew, a bird's song! As for me, I am something frightful, neither man nor beast,- a nondescript object, more hard, shapeless, and more trodden under foot than a pebble!
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
Besides, to be fair to him, his viciousness was perhaps not innate. From his earliest steps among men he had felt, then seen himself the object of jeers, condemnation, rejection. Human speech for him always meant mockery and curses. As he grew older he had found nothing but hatred around him. He had caught it. He had acquired the general viciousness. He had picked up the weapon with which he had been wounded.
Victor Hugo (Notre-Dame de Paris)
Notre-Dame de Paris is, in particular, a curious specimen of this variety. Each face, each stone of the venerable monument, is a page not only of the history of the country, but of the history of science and art as well.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame)
Why was I not made of stone like thee? --Quasimodo[to a gargoyle on the ramparts of Notre Dame as Esmeralda rides off with Gringoire].
Victor Hugo
When one has but a single idea he finds in it everything.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
That's life" said the philosopher each time he was almost laid prostrate, "It's often our best friends who make us fall
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame)
But, reverend master, it is not sufficient to pass one's life, one must earn the means for life.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
All civilisation begins with a theocracy and ends with a democracy. This law of liberty succeeding unity is written in architecture.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame)
قال : هل تعرفين ما تعنيه الصداقة؟ أجابت الغجرية: نعم, إنها أن نكون أخا وأختا, أن نكون روحين تتجاوران ولكنهما لا تتداخلان, كما تكون إصبعان من أصابع اليد الواحدة.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
in better company, they found among all those hideous carcasses two skeletons, one of which held the other in its embrace. One of these skeletons, which was that of a woman, still had a few strips of a garment which had once been white, and around her neck was to be seen a string of adrezarach beads with a little silk bag ornamented with green glass, which was open and empty. These objects were of so little value that the executioner had probably not cared for them. The other, which held this one in a close embrace, was the skeleton of a man. It was noticed that his spinal column was crooked, his head seated on his shoulder blades, and that one leg was shorter than the other. Moreover, there was no fracture of the vertebrae at the nape of the neck, and it was evident that he had not been hanged. Hence, the man to whom it had belonged had come thither and had died there. When they tried to detach the skeleton which he held in his embrace, he fell to dust.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
Djali trotted along behind them, so overjoyed at seeing Gringoire again that she constantly made him stumble by affectionately putting her horns between his legs. 'That's life,' said the philosopher, each time he narrowly escaped falling flat on his face. 'It's often our best friends who cause our downfall.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
Many people in Paris are quite content to look on at others, and there are plenty who regard a wall behind which something is happening as a very curious thing.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
الحب ! هو أ نكون اثنين ثم لا نكون إلا واحداً فقط . رجل وامرأه يذوبان معاً في ملاك ، إنه السماء
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
إن من لا يؤمن بشئ يجد نفسه دائماً في فترات من حياته علي دين الهيكل الذي يقع تحت يديه
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
I tell you, monsieur, it’s the end of the world. The students’ behaviour has never been so outrageous. It’s all these damnable modern inventions that are the ruin of everything.
Victor Hugo (Notre-Dame de Paris)
Time is greedy, man is greedier
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
There are for each of us several parallelisms between our intelligence, our habits, and our character, which develop without a break, and break only in the great disturbances of life.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback Of Notre Dame)
Do you know what friendship is?' he asked. 'Yes,' answered the gipsy; 'it is to be brother and sister, two souls which meet without mingling, two fingers of one hand.' 'And love?' continued Gringoire. 'Oh, love!' said she, and her voice trembled and her eye brightened. 'That is to be two and yet but one. A man and a woman blended into an angel. It is heaven itself.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
Admirable, however, as the Paris of the present day appears to you, build up and put together again in imagination the Paris of the fifteenth century; look at the light through that surprising host of steeples, towers, and belfries; pour forth amid the immense city, break against the points of its islands, compress within the arches of the bridges, the current of the Seine, with its large patches of green and yellow, more changeable than a serpent's skin; define clearly the Gothic profile of this old Paris upon an horizon of azure, make its contour float in a wintry fog which clings to its innumerable chimneys; drown it in deep night, and observe the extraordinary play of darkness and light in this sombre labyrinth of buildings; throw into it a ray of moonlight, which shall show its faint outline and cause the huge heads of the towers to stand forth from amid the mist; or revert to that dark picture, touch up with shade the thousand acute angles of the spires and gables, and make them stand out, more jagged than a shark's jaw, upon the copper-coloured sky of evening. Now compare the two.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
He was fine; he, that orphan that foundling that outcast; he felt himself august and strong; he looked full in the face that society from which he was banished, and into which he had so powerfully intervened; that human justice from which he had snatched its prey; all those tigers whose jaws perforce remained empty; those myrmidons, those judges, those executioners, all that royal power which he, poor, insignificant being, had foiled with the power of God.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
When one does wrong, one must do it thoroughly.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback Of Notre Dame)
A book is so soon made, costs so little, and may go so far! Why should we surprised that all human thought flows that way?
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
Ceci tuera cela
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
With a remainder of that brotherly compassion which is never totally absent from the heart of a drinker, Phoebus rolled Jehan with his foot onto one of those poor man's pillows which Providence provides on all the street corners of Paris and which the rich disdainfully refer to as heaps of garbage.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
Unable to rid myself of it, since I heard your song humming ever in my head, beheld your feet dancing always on my breviary, felt even at night, in my dreams, your form in contact wih my own, I desired to see you again, to touch you, to know who you were, to see whether I should really find you like the ideal image which I had retained of you, to shatter my dream, perchance with reality. At all events, I hoped that a new impression would efface the first, and the first had become insupportable. I sought you. I saw you once more. Calamity! When I had seen you twice, I wanted to see you a thousand times, I wanted to see you always. Then - how stop myself on that slope of hell? - then I no longer belonged to myself.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
And if you wish to receive of the ancient city an impression with which the modern one can no longer furnish you, climb--on the morning of some grand festival, beneath the rising sun of Easter or of Pentecost--climb upon some elevated point, whence you command the entire capital; and be present at the wakening of the chimes. Behold, at a signal given from heaven, for it is the sun which gives it, all those churches quiver simultaneously. First come scattered strokes, running from one church to another, as when musicians give warning that they are about to begin. Then, all at once, behold!--for it seems at times, as though the ear also possessed a sight of its own,--behold, rising from each bell tower, something like a column of sound, a cloud of harmony. First, the vibration of each bell mounts straight upwards, pure and, so to speak, isolated from the others, into the splendid morning sky; then, little by little, as they swell they melt together, mingle, are lost in each other, and amalgamate in a magnificent concert. It is no longer anything but a mass of sonorous vibrations incessantly sent forth from the numerous belfries; floats, undulates, bounds, whirls over the city, and prolongs far beyond the horizon the deafening circle of its oscillations. Nevertheless, this sea of harmony is not a chaos; great and profound as it is, it has not lost its transparency; you behold the windings of each group of notes which escapes from the belfries.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
He baptized his adopted child, and named him Quasimodo, either because he wished to mark in this way the day upon which the child was found, or because he wished to show by this name how imperfect and incomplete the poor little creature was. Indeed, Quasimodo, one eyed, hunchbacked, and knock kneed, was hardly more than half made.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
أو تدرين يا فتاة ما الشقاء بمعنى كلمة الشقاء؟ إنه أن يكون الإنسان إنساناً ولا إنسان، و رجلا مكفوفاً عن مصائر الرجال، فيحب ولا ينال، ثم يخسر دينه في سبيل لذة الوصال، فلا يلقى بعد خسرانه منها إلا الصدود و النكال، ثم يراها بعد ذلك و هي معبودته المقدسة، تضع كنز حسنها طواعية تحت قدمي وحش ليفترسه، بل ليلوثه و يدنسه، و هي قريرة العين راضية الفؤاد
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
Quasimodo then lifted his eye to look upon the gypsy girl, whose body, suspended from the gibbet, he beheld quivering afar, under its white robes, in the last struggles of death; then again he dropped it upon the archdeacon, stretched a shapeless mass at the foot of the tower, and he said with a sob that heaved his deep breast to the bottom, 'Oh-all that I've ever loved!' The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Victor Hugo
It would have been difficult to say what was the nature of this look, and whence proceeded the flame that flashed from it. It was a fixed gaze, which was, nevertheless, full of trouble and tumult. And, from the profound immobility of his whole body, barely agitated at intervals by an involuntary shiver, as a tree is moved by the wind; from the stiffness of his elbows, more marble than the balustrade on which they leaned; or the sight of the petrified smile which contracted his face,— one would have said that nothing living was left about Claude Frollo except his eyes.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
A minute afterwards he appeared upon the upper platform, still bearing the gipsy [sic] in his arms, still running wildly along, still shouting 'Sanctuary!' and the crowd still applauding. At last he made a third appearance on the summit of the tower of the great bell. From thence he seemed to show exultingly to the whole city the fair creature he had saved; and his thundering voice, that voice which was heard so seldom, and which he never heard at all, thrice repeated with frantic vehemence, even in the very clouds, 'Sactuary! Sanctuary! Sanctuary! The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Victor Hugo
C’est que l’amour est comme un arbre, il pousse de lui-même, jette profondément ses racines dans tout notre être, et continue souvent de verdoyer sur un cœur en ruines.   Et ce qu’il y a d’inexplicable, c’est que plus cette passion est aveugle, plus elle est tenace. Elle n’est jamais plus solide que lorsqu’elle n’a pas de raison en elle.  
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
would go somewhere, we would seek that spot on earth, where the sun is brightest, the sky the bluest, where the trees are most luxuriant. We would love each other, we would pour our two souls into each other, and we would have a thirst for ourselves which we would quench in common and incessantly at that fountain of inexhaustible love." She interrupted with a terrible and thrilling laugh. "Look, father, you have blood on your fingers!
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback Of Notre Dame)
Claude, saddened and discouraged in his human affections, by all this, had flung himself eagerly into the arms of learning, that sister which, at least does not laugh in your face, and which always pays you, though in money that is sometimes a little hollow, for the attention which you have paid to her. Hence, he became more and more learned, and, at the same time, as a natural consequence, more and more rigid as a priest, more and more sad as a man.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
Usually, the murmur that rises up from Paris by day is the city talking; in the night it is the city breathing; but here it is the city singing. Listen, then, to this chorus of bell-towers - diffuse over the whole the murmur of half a million people - the eternal lament of the river - the endless sighing of the wind - the grave and distant quartet of the four forests placed upon the hills, in the distance, like immense organpipes - extinguish to a half light all in the central chime that would otherwise be too harsh or too shrill; and then say whetehr you know of anything in the world more rich, more joyous, more golden, more dazzling, than this tumult of bells and chimes - this furnace of music - these thousands of brazen voices, all singing together in flutes of stone three hundred feet high, than this city which is but one orchestra - this symphony which roars like a tempest.
Victor Hugo
We shall not attempt to give the reader an idea of that tetrahedron nose-that horse-shoe mouth-that small left eye over-shadowed by a red bushy brow, while the right eye disappeared entirely under an enormous wart-of those straggling teeth with breaches here and there like the battlements of a fortress-of that horny lip, over which one of those teeth projected like the tusk of an elephant-of that forked chin-and, above all, of the expression diffused over the whole-that mixture of malice, astonishment, and melancholy. Let the reader, if he can, figure to himself this combination.
Victor Hugo
In a vast space left free between the crowd and the fire, a young girl was dancing. Whether this young girl was a human being, a fairy, or an angel, is what Gringoire, sceptical philosopher and ironical poet that he was, could not decide at the first moment, so fascinated was he by this dazzling vision. She was not tall, though she seemed so, so boldly did her slender form dart about. She was swarthy of complexion, but one divined that, by day, her skin must possess that beautiful golden tone of the Andalusians and the Roman women. Her little foot, too, was Andalusian, for it was both pinched and at ease in its graceful shoe. She danced, she turned, she whirled rapidly about on an old Persian rug, spread negligently under her feet; and each time that her radiant face passed before you, as she whirled, her great black eyes darted a flash of lightning at you. All around her, all glances were riveted, all mouths open; and, in fact, when she danced thus, to the humming of the Basque tambourine, which her two pure, rounded arms raised above her head, slender, frail and vivacious as a wasp, with her corsage of gold without a fold, her variegated gown puffing out, her bare shoulders, her delicate limbs, which her petticoat revealed at times, her black hair, her eyes of flame, she was a supernatural creature.
Victor Hugo
The sixth of January, 1482, is not, however, a day of which history has preserved the memory. There was nothing notable in the event which thus set the bells and the bourgeois of Paris in a ferment from early morning. It was neither an assault by the Picards nor the Burgundians, nor a hunt led along in procession, nor a revolt of scholars in the town of Laas, nor an entry of “our much dread lord, monsieur the king,” nor even a pretty hanging of male and female thieves by the courts of Paris. Neither was it the arrival, so frequent in the fifteenth
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
Victor-Marie Hugo (26 February 1802 — 22 May 1885) was a French poet, novelist, playwright, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights campaigner, and perhaps the most influential exponent of the Romantic movement in France. In France, Hugo's literary reputation rests on his poetic and dramatic output. Among many volumes of poetry, Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles stand particularly high in critical esteem, and Hugo is sometimes identified as the greatest French poet. In the English-speaking world his best-known works are often the novels Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris (sometimes translated into English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame). Though extremely conservative in his youth, Hugo moved to the political left as the decades passed; he became a passionate supporter of republicanism, and his work touches upon most of the political and social issues and artistic trends of his time. Source: Wikipedia
Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)
Furono trovati tra tutte quelle carcasse raccapriccianti due scheletri di cui uno teneva l'altro strettamente abbracciato. Uno di questi due scheletri, che era quello di una donna, aveva ancora qualche brandello di una veste la cui stoffa doveva essere stata bianca e intorno al collo una collana di adrézarach con un sacchettino di seta, ornato di vetri verdi, che era aperto e vuoto. Quegli oggetti avevano così poco valore che senza dubbio il boia non li aveva voluti. L'altro, che teneva questo primo scheletro strettamente abbracciato, era lo scheletro di un uomo. Fu notato che aveva la colonna vertebrale deviata, la testa nelle scapole, e una gamba più corta dell'altra. Non aveva però alcuna rottura di vertebre alla nuca, ed era evidente che non era stato impiccato. L'uomo al quale apparteneva era dunque andato là, e là vi era morto. Quando si cercò di staccarlo dallo scheletro che abbracciava, si disfece in polvere. " - Notre-Dame de Paris, V. Hugo
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
Paris has a child, and the forest has a bird; the bird is called the sparrow; the child is called the gamin. Couple these two ideas which contain, the one all the furnace, the other all the dawn; strike these two sparks together, Paris, childhood; there leaps out from them a little being. Homuncio, Plautus would say. This little being is joyous. He has not food every day, and he goes to the play every evening, if he sees good. He has no shirt on his body, no shoes on his feet, no roof over his head; he is like the flies of heaven, who have none of these things. He is from seven to thirteen years of age, he lives in bands, roams the streets, lodges in the open air, wears an old pair of trousers of his father's, which descend below his heels, an old hat of some other father, which descends below his ears, a single suspender of yellow listing; he runs, lies in wait, rummages about, wastes time, blackens pipes, swears like a convict, haunts the wine-shop, knows thieves, calls gay women thou, talks slang, sings obscene songs, and has no evil in his heart. This is because he has in his heart a pearl, innocence; and pearls are not to be dissolved in mud. So long as man is in his childhood, God wills that he shall be innocent. If one were to ask that enormous city: "What is this?" she would reply: "It is my little one.
Victor Hugo (Works of Victor Hugo. Les Miserables, Notre-Dame de Paris, Man Who Laughs, Toilers of the Sea, Poems & More)
Questo ucciderà quello. Il libro ucciderà l’edificio. L’invenzione della stampa è il più grande avvenimento della storia. E’ la rivoluzione madre. E’ il completo rinnovarsi del modo di espressione dell’umanità, è il pensiero umano che si spoglia di una forma e ne assume un’altra, è il completo e definitivo mutamento di pelle di quel serpente simbolico che, da Adamo in poi, rappresenta l’intelligenza. Sotto forma di stampa, il pensiero è più che mai imperituro. E’ volatile, inafferrabile, indistruttibile. Si fonde con l’aria. Al tempo dell’architettura, diveniva montagna e si impadroniva con forza di un secolo e di un luogo. Ora diviene stormo di uccelli, si sparpaglia ai quattro venti e occupa contemporaneamente tutti i punti dell’aria e dello spazio.. Da solido che era, diventa vivo. Passa dalla durata all’ immortalità. Si può distruggere una mole, ma come estirpare l’ubiquità? Venga pure un diluvio, e anche quando la montagna sarà sparita sotto i flutti da molto tempo, gli uccelli voleranno ancora; e basterà che solo un’arca galleggi alla superficie del cataclisma, ed essi vi poseranno, sopravvivranno con quella, con quella assisteranno al decrescere delle acque, e il nuovo mondo che emergerà da questo caos svegliandosi vedrà planare su di sé, alato e vivente, il pensiero del mondo sommerso. Bisogna ammirare e sfogliare incessantemente il libro scritto dall'architettura, ma non bisogna negare la grandezza dell'edificio che la stampa erige a sua volta. Questo edificio è colossale. E’ il formicaio delle intelligenze. E’ l’alveare in cui tutte le immaginazioni, queste api dorate, arrivano con il loro miele. L’edificio ha mille piani. Sulle sue rampe si vedono sbucare qua e là delle caverne tenebrose della scienza intrecciantisi nelle sue viscere. Per tutta la sua superficie l’arte fa lussureggiare davanti allo sguardo arabeschi, rosoni, merletti. La stampa, questa macchina gigante che pompa senza tregua tutta la linfa intellettuale della società, vomita incessantemente nuovi materiali per l’opera sua. Tutto il genere umano è sull’ impalcatura. Ogni spirito è muratore. Il più umile tura il suo buco o posa la sua pietra. Certo, è anche questa una costruzione che cresce e si ammucchia in spirali senza fine, anche qui c’è confusione di lingue, attività incessante, lavoro infaticabile, concorso accanito dell’umanità intera, rifugio promesso all’ intelligenza contro un nuovo diluvio, contro un’invasione di barbari. E’ la seconda torre di Babele del genere umano." - Notre-Dame de Paris, V. Hugo
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)