Travis > Travis's Quotes

“The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Those who do not weep, do not see.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is invisible labor.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“You ask me what forces me to speak? a strange thing; my conscience.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Before him he saw two roads, both equally straight; but he did see two; and that terrified him--he who had never in his life known anything but one straight line. And, bitter anguish, these two roads were contradictory.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Diamonds are found only in the dark bowels of the earth; truths are found only in the depths of thought. It seemed to him that after descending into those depths after long groping in the blackest of this darkness, he had at last found one of these diamonds, one of these truths, and that he held it in his hand; and it blinded him to look at it. (pg. 231)”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Love is the foolishness of men, and the wisdom of God.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“But listen, there will be more joy in heaven over the tears of a repentant sinner than over the white robes of a hundred just men.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“We pray together, we are afraid together, and then we go to sleep. Even if Satan came into the house, no one would interfere. After all, what is there to fear in this house? There is always one with us who is the strongest. Satan may visit our house, but the good Lord lives here.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“The poor man shuddered, overflowed with an angelic joy; he declared in his transport that this would last through life; he said to himself that he really had not suffered enough to deserve such radiant happiness, and he thanked God, in the depths of his soul, for having permitted that he, a miserable man, should be so loved by this innocent being.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Do not forget, do not ever forget, that you have promised me to use the money to make yourself an honest man.'

Valjean, who did not recall having made any promise, was silent. The bishop had spoken the words slowly and deliberately. He concluded with a solemn emphasis:

Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to what is evil but to what is good. I have bought your soul to save it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Have no fear of robbers or murderers. They are external dangers, petty dangers. We should fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices the real murderers. The great dangers are within us. Why worry about what threatens our heads or our purses? Let us think instead of what threatens our souls.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“So long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Miserables cannot fail to be of use.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Woe, alas, to those who have loved only bodies, forms, appearances! Death will rob them of everything. Try to love souls, you will find them again.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“To be a saint is the exception; to be a just person is the rule. Err, stumble, commit sin, but be one of the just.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“The truth is, everyone likes to look down on someone. If your favorites are all avant-garde writers who throw in Sanskrit and German, you can look down on everyone. If your favorites are all Oprah Book Club books, you can at least look down on mystery readers. Mystery readers have sci-fi readers. Sci-fi can look down on fantasy. And yes, fantasy readers have their own snobbishness. I’ll bet this, though: in a hundred years, people will be writing a lot more dissertations on Harry Potter than on John Updike. Look, Charles Dickens wrote popular fiction. Shakespeare wrote popular fiction—until he wrote his sonnets, desperate to show the literati of his day that he was real artist. Edgar Allan Poe tied himself in knots because no one realized he was a genius. The core of the problem is how we want to define “literature”. The Latin root simply means “letters”. Those letters are either delivered—they connect with an audience—or they don’t. For some, that audience is a few thousand college professors and some critics. For others, its twenty million women desperate for romance in their lives. Those connections happen because the books successfully communicate something real about the human experience. Sure, there are trashy books that do really well, but that’s because there are trashy facets of humanity. What people value in their books—and thus what they count as literature—really tells you more about them than it does about the book.”
― Brent weeks

“Love is a fragile, corruptible thing. And yet I have seen it evince a curious strength. It is beyond any comprehension Love is a weakness that once in a great while triumphs over strength. ”
― Brent Weeks, Shadow's Edge

“king: "You're...you're shit! You shitting, shitting shit!"
"Your Majesty," Durzo said gravely. "A man of your stature's cursing vocabulary ought to extend beyond a tedious reiteration of the excreta that fills the void between his ears.”
― Brent Weeks, The Way of Shadows

“There's no guarantee that justice will win out or that a noble sacrifice will make any difference. But when it does, there's something that still swells my chest. There's magic in that.... It tells me that's the way things are supposed to be. ”
― Brent Weeks, Beyond the Shadows

“What people value in their books—and thus what they count as literature—really tells you more about them than it does about the book.”
― Brent Weeks

“The intuition that had kept Kylar from Vi even from the first time she'd tried to seduce him at the Drake estate suddenly crystallized: You don't share your life with a woman's body, you share your life with a woman.”
― Brent Weeks, Beyond the Shadows

“Words were another sword for the man who wielded them well.”
― Brent Weeks, The Way of Shadows

“It's better that the innocent should live than that the guilty die”
― Brent Weeks, The Black Prism

“Bewildered as he might be, sometimes a man's highest calling is simply to stand, and hug.”
― Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife

“How can one love the light and live in darkness?”
― Brent Weeks, The Way of Shadows

“The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.”
― Tom Clancy

“Beware the fury of a patient man”
― Tom Clancy

“Fix your eyes forward on what you can do, not back on what you cannot change.”
― Tom Clancy