Hugo Cabret Quotes

Fairy tales only happen in movies.
-George Melies
from The Invention of Hugo Cabret ~ Brian Selznick

Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. ~ Hugo Cabret

She walked to the rear door and took out a bobby pin from her pocket. Hugo watched as she fiddled with the pin inside the lock until it clicked and the door opened. "How did you learn to do that?" asked Hugo. "Books," answered Isabelle. ~ Brian Selznick

I'd imagine the whole world was one big machine. Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured, if the entire world was one big machine, I couldn't be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason, too. ~ Hugo Cabret

Did you ever notice that all machines are made for some reason?" he asked Isabelle. "They are built to make you laugh, like the mouse here, or to tell the time, like clocks, or to fill you with wonder like the automaton. Maybe that's why a broken machine always makes me a little sad, because it isn't able to do what it was made to do." Isabelle picked up the mouse, wound it again, and set it down. "Maybe it's the same with people," Hugo continued. "If you lose your purpose ... it's like you're broken. ~ Brian Selznick

Martin Scorsese is doing a 3D movie (Hugo Cabret). A lot of amazing filmmakers are. Not just the obvious of Jim Cameron, but Spielberg is doing it and Peter Jackson has worked in it. In the hands of those types of people, it will just keep getting better and better. ~ Rob Letterman

Principal courtyard, which was very large, with walks encircling it under arcades in the old Florentine fashion, and gardens planted with magnificent trees. In the dining-room, a long and superb gallery which was situated on the ground-floor and opened on the gardens, M. Henri Puget had entertained in state, on July 29, 1714, My Lords Charles Brulart de Genlis, archbishop; Prince d'Embrun; Antoine de Mesgrigny, the capuchin, Bishop of Grasse; Philippe de Vendome, Grand Prior of France, Abbe of Saint Honore de Lerins; Francois de Berton de Crillon, bishop, Baron de Vence; Cesar de Sabran de Forcalquier, bishop, Seignor of Glandeve; and Jean Soanen, Priest of the Oratory, preacher in ordinary to the king, bishop, Seignor of Senez. The portraits of these seven reverend personages decorated this apartment; and this memorable date, the 29th of July, 1714, was there engraved in letters of gold on a table of white marble. ~ Victor Hugo

Take all reasonable advantage of that which the present may offer you. It is the only time which is ours. Yesterday is buried forever, and to-morrow we may never see. ~ Victor Hugo

Humanity is identity. All men are made of the same clay. No difference, here below at least, in predestination. The same darkness before, the same flesh during, the same ashes after. But when ignorance is mixed with human dough, it blackens it. This incurable blackness takes over man's insides and there turns into evil ... Destroy the dark hold, Ignorance, and you destroy the mole, Crime. ~ Victor Hugo

Slaying wealth is not the same thing as dividing it. ~ Victor Hugo

The heart becomes heroic through passion. It is no longer composed of anything but what is pure; it no longer rests upon anything but what is elevated and great. ~ Victor Hugo

The straight line, a respectable optical illusion which ruins many a man. ~ Victor Hugo

We must be brief. ~ Victor Hugo

If he [Hugo Chavez] thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. ~ Pat Robertson

A cannonball travels only two thousand miles an hour; light travels two hundred thousand miles a second. Such is the superiority of Jesus Christ over Napoleon. ~ Victor Hugo

Now life has killed the dream I dreamed. ~ Victor Hugo

In fact, were it given to our human eye to see into the consciences of others, we would judge a man much more surely from what he dreams than from what he thinks. There is will in the thought, there is none in the dream. Even in the gigantic and the ideal, the dream, which is completely spontaneous, takes and keeps the form of our mind. Nothing springs more directly and more sincerely from our innermost souls than our unreflected and indefinite aspirations, much more than in ideas, which are structured, studied, and compared, can we find the true character of each man. Our chimeras are most like us. Each of us dreams the unknown and the impossible according to his own nature. ~ Victor Hugo

Being good is easy, what is difficult is being just. ~ Victor Hugo

The truth of an upright man must be accepted on his own terms. Moreover, since natures vary, we must agree that all the beauties of human excellence may be fostered by faiths that we do not share. ~ Victor Hugo

The guillotine is the ultimate expression of Law, and its name is vengeance; it is not neutral, nor does it allow us to remain neutral. ~ Victor Hugo

When you shall have learned to know, and to love, you will still suffer. The day is born in tears. The luminous weep, if only over those in darkness. ~ Victor Hugo

From a cultural point of view the richest moments in civilization, in history, have occurred when the boundaries separating popular and creative literature disappear, and literature becomes simultaneously both things-something that enriches all audiences, something that can satisfy all kinds of mentalities and knowledge and education, and at the same time is creative and artistic and popular. Dickens, Hugo, and Dumas are extraordinary cases in point; and in Spain in the nineteenth century there are many other examples, such as Perez Galdos. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

In all his trials he was sustained and at times even exalted by a secret strength in himself. The soul aids the body and at moments uplifts it. It is the only bird that can endure a cage. ~ Victor Hugo

Some people point to me as the cause of all society's problems, others as if I am the benefactor, responsible for everything good, but I am neither the former nor the latter. I am but a man in particular circumstances, and the most beautiful part is that an individual human life is capable of contributing to the growth, the awakening of the collective strength. That is what matters! ~ Hugo Chavez

I have spent my life laboriously doing nothing. ~ Hugo Grotius

I see black light (his last words) ~ Victor Hugo

The Convention promulgated this great axiom: "The liberty of one citizen ends where the liberty of another citizen begins," which comprises in two lines the entire law of human society. ~ Victor Hugo

I dislike wealth and prosperity, especially that of other men. ~ Victor Hugo

It is those books which a man possesses but does not read which constitute the most suspicious evidence against him. ~ Victor Hugo

If no one loved, the sun would go out. ~ Victor Hugo

Richard Hugo taught me that anyone with a desire to write, an ear for language and a bit of imagination could become a writer. He also, in a way, gave me permission to write about northern Montana. ~ James Welch

Doing nothing is happiness for children and misery for old men. ~ Victor Hugo

We do not comprehend everything, but we insult nothing. ~ Victor Hugo

Injustice had made her sulle, and misery had made her ugly. ~ Victor Hugo

Books are cold but safe friends ~ Victor Hugo

Such is the remorseless progression of human society, shedding lives and souls as it goes on its way. It is an ocean into which men sink who have been cast out by the law and consigned, with help most cruelly withheld, to moral death. The sea is the pitiless social darkness into which the penal system casts those it has condemned, an unfathomable waste of misery. The human soul, lost in those depths, may become a corpse. Who shall revive it? ~ Victor Hugo

God will reward you,' he said. 'You must be an angel since you care for flowers. ~ Victor Hugo

pottery and household utensils down on the soldiers from the roofs; a bad sign; and when this matter was reported to Marshal Soult, Napoleon's old lieutenant grew thoughtful, as he recalled Suchet's saying at Saragossa: "We are lost when the old women empty their pots de chambre on our heads." These ~ Victor Hugo

Hypocrisy is nothing, in fact, but a horrible hopefulness. ~ Victor Hugo

Even God cannot make two times two not make four. ~ Hugo Grotius