Quotes about Character
That men saw his mask, but the bishop saw his face. That men saw his life, but the bishop saw his conscience.
— Victor Hugo
Javert, though hideous, was not ignoble.
— Victor Hugo
any one who had listened to Courfeyrac in 1828 would have thought he heard Tholomyes in 1817. Only, Courfeyrac was an honourable fellow. Beneath the apparent similarities of the exterior mind, the difference between him and Tholomyes was very great. The latent man which existed in the two was totally different in the first from what it was in the second. There was in Tholomyes a district attorney, and in Courfeyrac a paladin.
— Victor Hugo
There are no bad plants or bad men. There is only bad husbandry.
— Victor Hugo
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
Was there a voice that whispered in his ear that he had just passed the most solemn moment of his destiny, that there was no longer a middle course for him; that from now on, he would either be the best of men or he would be the worst of men; that he now had to rise higher, so to speak, than the bishop or fall even lower than the galley slave; that if he wanted to be good, he had to be an angel; that if he wanted to stay bad, he had to be a monster from hell?
— Victor Hugo
A man's eye reveals his quality. It shows how much of a man there is within us. We declare ourselves by the light that gleams under our eyebrows. Petty spirits merely wink; great spirits emit a flash of lightning.
— Victor Hugo
He was a friendly but sad figure. People said of him: 'A rich man who is not proud. A fortunate man who does not look happy.
— Victor Hugo
No man was created good by God, nor can be made entirely bad by man.
— Victor Hugo
True or false, what is said about people often has as much bearing on their lives and especially on their destinies as what they do.
— Victor Hugo
Our acts make or mar us, we are the children of our own deeds.
— Victor Hugo
It is a novel constructed like a poem, where each character is only exceptional because if the hyperbolic manner in which he represents generality.
— Victor Hugo