Victor Hugo
French poet, novelist, and dramatist
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
The word is the Verb, and the Verb is God.
—Victor Hugo, French poet, novelist, and dramatist, Les Contemplations, 1856
Posted on December 9, 2003 at 3:24 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.
—Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, 1862
Posted on July 9, 1999 at 9:30 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
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, Les Misérables
Posted on August 6, 2003 at 10:10 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Nothing can be more depressing than to expose, naked to the light of thought, the hideous growth of argot. Indeed it is like a sort of repellent animal intended to dwell in darkness which has been dragged out of its cloaca. One seems to see a horned and living creature viciously struggling to be restored to the place where it belongs. One word is like a claw, another like a sightless and bleeding eye; and there are phrases which clutch like the pincers of a crab. And all of it is alive with the hideous vitality of things that have organized themselves amid disorganization.
—Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Posted on March 13, 2001 at 7:55 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Despots play their part in the works of thinkers. Fettered words are terrible words. The writer doubles and trebles the power of his writing when a ruler imposes silence on the people. Something emerges from that enforced silence, a mysterious fullness which filters through and becomes steely in the thought. Repression in history leads to conciseness in the historian, and the rocklike hardness of much celebrated prose is due to the tempering of the tyrant.
—Victor Hugo, French poet, novelist, and dramatist, Les Misérables
Posted on April 26, 2002 at 7:44 AM
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