Emily > Emily 's Quotes

“Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation I associate you only with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“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

“When you get an idea into your head you find it in everything.”
― Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

“Spira, spera.

(breathe, hope)”
― 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 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

“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

“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

“The owl goes not into the nest of the lark.”
― 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

“by making himself a priest made himself a demon.”
― Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

“Homo homini monstrum”
― 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

“Oh! Everything I loved!”
― 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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“Phoebus de Chateaupers likewise came to a 'tragic end': he married.”
― 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

“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

“For dogs we kings should have lions, and for cats, tigers. The great benefits a crown.”
― 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

“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

“When one has but a single idea he finds in it everything.”
― Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

“When one does wrong, one must do it thoroughly.”
― Victor Hugo, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame

“If you aren't cute, you may as well be clever.”
― David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day

“I hate you' she said to me one afternoon. 'I really, really hate you.' Call me sensitive, but I couldn't help but take it personally.”
― David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day

“On my fifth trip to France I limited myself to the words and phrases that people actually use. From the dog owners I learned "Lie down," "Shut up," and "Who shit on this carpet?" The couple across the road taught me to ask questions correctly, and the grocer taught me to count. Things began to come together, and I went from speaking like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly. "Is thems the thoughts of cows?" I'd ask the butcher, pointing to the calves' brains displayed in the front window. "I want me some lamb chop with handles on 'em.”
― David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day