HUGO, Victor: The Hunchback of Notre Dame

HUGO, VICTOR: The Hunchback of Notre Dame

But, comrade, just because you annoyed us this morning is no reason why we shouldn’t hang you tonight.”

Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Reader’s Digest Best Loved Books, Volume 4, chapter 3, pg. 35

I don’t see why poets should not be classed as one of you. Aesop was a vagabond, Homer a beggar, Mercury a thief.”

Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Reader’s Digest Best Loved Books, Volume 4, chapter 3, pg. 35

The adventure partook of enchantment. He began seriously to take himself for the hero of some fairy tale. Now and then he would fix his eyes on the holes in his coat, as if to satisfy himself of his identity.

Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Reader’s Digest Best Loved Books, Volume 4, chapter 4, pg. 39

“What will the world come to,” said another, “if that is the way they make children nowadays? It’s a really abominable monster, and ought to be drowned or burned.”
Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Reader’s Digest Best Loved Books, Volume 4, chapter 5, pg. 46

It was mortifying to him that this sanctuary, once edified by the name of Frollo, should not be scandalized by it.

Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Reader’s Digest Best Loved Books, Volume 4, chapter 6, pg. 55

He had, it was said, tasted all the apples of the tree of knowledge, and had at last bitten at the forbidden fruit;

Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Reader’s Digest Best Loved Books, Volume 4, chapter 6, pg. 55

The day after a public festival was a day of annoyance for everybody, but most especially for the official whose duty it was to clear away the holiday’s leftover filth, material and figurative, and to sit at the trial of offenders at the Grand Châtelet.

Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Reader’s Digest Best Loved Books, Volume 4, chapter 6, pg. 57

“You’ll come to no good end.”
“The beginning at least will have been good.”
Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Reader’s Digest Best Loved Books, Volume 4, chapter 10, pg. 95

In the Middle Ages, when a building was complete there was almost as much of it underground as above. A palace, or fortress, or church always had a double basement, unless it stood upon piles like Notre-Dame.
Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Reader’s Digest Best Loved Books, Volume 4, chapter 13, pg. 112

I frighten you, I see. I’m ugly enough, God knows. Don’t look at me, just listen.
Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Reader’s Digest Best Loved Books, Volume 4, chapter 15, pg. 132

Oh! Why am I not of stone, like you?
Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Reader’s Digest Best Loved Books, Volume 4, chapter 15, pg. 132

“I’d like nothing better, Dom Cloude, but perhaps I would get my own neck into an ugly noose!”
“What difference would that make?”

“What difference! Master, I have just begun two new books.”
Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Reader’s Digest Best Loved Books, Volume 4, chapter 16, pg. 141

“Besides, what attaches you so strongly to life?”
“Why, a thousand things. The fresh air, the blue sky, morning and evening, the warm sunshine, and the moonlight, my good friends, good-natured damsels, books to write, and I know not what besides. And then I have the good fortune to pass all my days from morning to night with a man of genius – myself- which is exceedingly agreeable.”

Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Reader’s Digest Best Loved Books, Volume 4, chapter 16, pg. 141

There is all I ever loved!

Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Reader’s Digest Best Loved Books, Volume 4, chapter 19, pg. 180