Amnesty is as good for those who give it as for those who receive it. It has the admirable quality of bestowing mercy on both sides. – Victor Hugo
We see past time in a telescope and present time in a microscope. Hence the apparent enormities of the present. – Victor Hugo
When God desires to destroy a thing, he entrusts its destruction to the thing itself. Every bad institution of this world ends by suicide. – Victor Hugo
A saint addicted to excessive self-abnegation is a dangerous associate; he may infect you with poverty, and a stiffening of those joints which are needed for advancement — in a word, with more renunciation than you care for — and so you flee the contagion. – Victor Hugo