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
We see past time in a telescope and present time in a microscope. Hence the apparent enormities of the present. – Victor Hugo
There have been in this century only one great man and one great thing: Napoleon and liberty. For want of the great man, let us have the great thing. – Victor Hugo
Your mock saint who stands in a niche is not a woman if she have not suffered, still less a woman if she have not sinned. Fall at the feet of your idol as you wish, but drag her down to your level after that — the only level she should ever reach, that of your heart. – Baroness Emmuska Orczy