Victor Hugo Children Quotations

Blessed be Providence which has given to each his toy: the doll to the child, the child to the woman, the woman to the man, the man to the devil!

The three great problems of this century; the degradation of man in the proletariat, the subjection of women through hunger, the atrophy of the child by darkness.

A great artist is a great man in a great child.

There are fathers who do not love their children; there is no grandfather who does not adore his grandson.

Our acts make or mar us, we are the children of our own deeds.

No one can keep a secret better than a child.

Doing nothing is happiness for children and misery for old men.

No one ever keeps a secret so well as a child.

A bird sings, a child prattles, but it is the same hymn; hymn indistinct, inarticulate, but full of profound meaning.

Mothers arms are made of tenderness, And sweet sleep blesses the child who lies therein.

I exist," murmurs someone whose name is Everyone. "I'm young and in love; I am old and I want rest; I work, I prosper, I do good business, I have houses to rent, money in State Securities; I am happy, I have wife and children; I like all these things and I want to go on living, so leave me alone."... There are moments when all this casts a deep chill on the large-minded pioneers of the human race.

If you look in the eyes of the young, you see flame. If you look in the eyes of the old, you see light.

Caution is the eldest child of wisdom

Don't educate your children to be rich. Educate them to be happy, so they know the value of things, not the price.

Who can be sure that Jean Valjean had not been on the verge of losing heart and giving up the struggle? In loving he recovered his strength. But the truth is that he was no less vulnerable than Cosette. He protected her and she sustained him. Thanks to him she could go forward into life, and thanks to her he could continue virtous. He was the child's support and she his mainstay. Sublime, unfathomable marvel of the balance of destiny!

The transept belfry and the two towers were to him three great cages, the birds in which, taught by him, would sing for him alone. Yet it was these same bells which had made him deaf; but mothers are often fondest of the child who has made them suffer most.

This child whom we Love, Brings daylight Into our soul.

Women play with their beauty as children do with their knives. They wound themselves with it.

...mothers are often fondest of the child which has caused them the greatest pain.

Children at once accept joy and happiness with quick familiarity, being themselves naturally all happiness and joy.

The mother...swinging the children by pulling on a length of string, while at the same time she kept and eye on them with that protective watchfulness, half animal, half angelic, which is the quality of motherhood.

Slowly he took out the clothes in which, ten years beforem Cosette had left Montfermeil; first the little dress, then the black scarf, then the great heavy child's shoes Cosette could still almost have worn, so small was her foot, then the vest of very thich fustian, then the knitted petticoat, the the apron with pockets, then the wool stockings.... Then his venerable white head fell on the bed, this old stoical heart broke, his face was swallowed up, so to speak, in Cosette's clothes, and anybody who had passed along the staircase at that moment would have heard irrepressible sobbing.

A little girl without a doll is almost as unhappy, and quite as impossible, as a woman without children." from chapter VIII of Les Miserables