Victor Hugo Quotes

The land of literature is a fairy land to those who view it at a distance, but, like all other landscapes, the charm fades on a nearer approach, and the thorns and briars become visible.

There is a flaw with words, they always force us to feel enlightened, but when we turn around to face the world they always fail us and we end up facing the world as we always have, without enlightenment

something can only become an illusion after disillusionment. before that, it is something real. what caused the disillusionment? no one told me the print on the wall was just ink and paper and had no life of its own. at some point the cat stopped blinking, and i stopped thinking it could.

Every real object must cease to be what it seemed, and none could ever be what the whole soul desired.

I have the terrible feeling that, because I am wearing a white beard and am sitting in the back of the theatre, you expect me to tell you the truth about something. These are the cheap seats, not Mount Sinai.

Reality has a way of intruding upon illusion.

I wasn’t meant for reality, but life came and found me.

Disappointment results from the removal of illusion.

Disillusion is the last illusion.

Things are always different from what they might be.

What we gain by experience is not worth that we lose in illusion

All I know is reception; I am and I have: but I do not get, and when I fancied I had gotten anything, I found I did not.

When I turn the lights out, when I close my eyes, reality overcomes me, I'm living a lie.

Everything that happens is at least one dimension smaller than you've imagined it to be.

I had been taught to look for monsters and devils and I found ordinary people.

The days of idealism had gone. Only life was left.

Illusions are bound to be shattered

I saw that everything famous and beautiful in the world, if we judge by the descriptions and drawings of writers and artists, always loses when we go to see it and examine it closely.

An illusion which makes me happy is worth a verity which drags me to the ground.

A lot of people experience the world with the same incredulity as when a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat.…We know that the world is not all sleight of hand and deception because we are in it, we are part of it. Actually we are the white rabbit being pulled out of the hat. The only difference beween us and the white rabbit is that the rabbit does not realize it is taking part in a magic trick.

Wishful thinking is one thing, and reality another.

The dream is real, my friends. The failure to realize it is the only unreality.

As a son of a man who pretended to be one thing for 33 years of my life and then was another thing, the questions of 'what is real' and 'what is not real' are very blurrily vivid to me.

Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.

The difference between reality and unreality is that reality has so little to recommend it.