Victor Hugo Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo Quotes & Sayings

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Death belongs only to God. By what right to men tamper with a thing so unknowable? — Victor Hugo

If I were Jesus Christ, I would save Judas. — Victor Hugo

One becomes gradually accustomed to poison. — Victor Hugo

My fellow, you strike me at present as being situated in the moon, kingdom of dream, province of illusion, capital: Soap-Bubble. — Victor Hugo

Short as life is, we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time. — Victor Hugo

The real, native South Seas food is lousy. You can't eat it. — Victor Hugo

Part 1
A Just Man — Victor Hugo

He always took his meals alone, with an open book before him, which he read. — Victor Hugo

Examine the road over which the fault has passed.
- Charles Francios Bienvenu Myriel — Victor Hugo

The persistence of an all-absorbing idea is terrible. — Victor Hugo

The true artist can only labor con amore. — Victor Hugo

Why was I not made of stone like thee?
Quasimodo[to a gargoyle on the ramparts of Notre Dame as Esmeralda rides off with Gringoire]. — Victor Hugo

I am a soul. I know well that what I shall render up to the grave is not myself. That which is myself will go elsewhere. Earth, thou art not my abyss! — Victor Hugo

I was always a lover of soft-winged things. — Victor Hugo

Men become accustomed to poison by degrees — Victor Hugo

You preserve your shame but you kill your glory. — Victor Hugo

If there is anything more heart-breaking than a body perishing for lack of bread, it is a soul which is dying from hunger for the light. — Victor Hugo

All that he might have felt of love in his entire life melted into a sort of ineffable radiance. — Victor Hugo

To sacrifice the world to paradise is to let slip the prey for the shadow. — Victor Hugo

Whatever causes night in our souls may leave stars. Cimourdain was full of virtues and truth, but they shine out of a dark background. — Victor Hugo

My misfortune is that I still resemble a man too much. I should liked to be wholly a beast like that goat. - Quasimodo — Victor Hugo

Hell is an outrage on humanity. When you tell me that your deity made you in his image, I reply that he must have been very ugly. — Victor Hugo

The last resort of kings, the cannonball. The last resort of the people, the paving stone. — Victor Hugo

There are men who dig for gold; [Monseigneur Bienvenu] dug for compassion. — Victor Hugo

God decreed that the love which came to Cosette was a love that saves. — Victor Hugo

What billows are ideas! How quickly they cover all that it is their mission to destroy and to bury, and how promptly they create frightful gulfs! — Victor Hugo

He understood how to sit down and hold his peace for long hours beside the man who had lost the wife of his love, — Victor Hugo

Mothers are often fondest of the child which has caused them the greatest pain. — Victor Hugo

Blacheville smiles with the self-satisfied smugness of a man whose vanity is tickled — Victor Hugo

Without vanity, without coquetry, without curiosity, in a word, without the fall, woman would not be woman. Much of her grace is in her frailty. — Victor Hugo

God whose gifts in gracious flood
Unto all who seek are sent,
Only asks you to be good
And is content. — Victor Hugo

A war between Europeans is a civil war. — Victor Hugo

Reality in strong doses frightens. — Victor Hugo

Dark Error's other hidden side is truth. — Victor Hugo

The utmost extremity of degradation is the obscene merriment to which it gives rise. — Victor Hugo

Who then can calculate the path of the molecule? how do we know that the creations of worlds are not determined by the fall of grains of sand? — Victor Hugo

Madame Thenardier was approaching her forties, which is equivalent to fifty in a woman ... — Victor Hugo

Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers. — Victor Hugo

There is neither a foreign war nor a civil war; there is only just and unjust war. — Victor Hugo

Table talk and amorous talk are equally impossible to grasp; amorous talk is all pretty bubbles, table talk, hot air. — Victor Hugo

Style is the substance of the subject called unceasingly to the surface. — Victor Hugo

Strange to say, the luminous world is the invisible world; the luminous world is that which we do not see. Our eyes of flesh see only night. — Victor Hugo

Night and the day, when united,
Bring forth the beautiful light. — Victor Hugo

exquisite--such was Fantine; and beneath these feminine adornments and these ribbons one could divine a statue, and in that statue a soul. — Victor Hugo

Excitement is not enjoyment: in calmness lies true pleasure. The most precious wines are sipped, not bolted at a swallow. — Victor Hugo

He loved books, those undemanding but faithful friends. — Victor Hugo

Monsieur, innocence is its own crown! Innocence has only to act to be noble! She is as august in rags as fleur de lys. — Victor Hugo

God has made the cat to give man the pleasure of caressing the tiger. — Victor Hugo

The clouds, - the only birds that never sleep. — Victor Hugo

The peculiarity of prudery is to station the more sentries the less the fortress is menaced. — Victor Hugo

You have knocked at every door?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Have you knocked at that one there?"
"No."
"Knock there. — Victor Hugo

There is not a metaphor, not an analogy, in slang, which does not contain a lesson. — Victor Hugo

It is only barbarous nations who have a sudden growth after a victory — Victor Hugo

To divinise is human, to humanise is divine. — Victor Hugo

The realities of life do not allow themselves to be forgotten. — Victor Hugo

Conscience is God present in man. — Victor Hugo

Gutenberg's invention of printing is the greatest event-the mother of revolution — Victor Hugo

Nothing is more charming than the glow of happiness amid squalor. There is a rose-tinted attic in all our lives. — Victor Hugo

A stout heart may be ruined in fortune but not in spirit. — Victor Hugo

Always and everywhere people are to be found who have seen everything. — Victor Hugo

Proverty and wealth are comparative sins. — Victor Hugo

There are no rules, no models; rather, there are no rules other than the general laws of Nature. — Victor Hugo

In the domain of art there is no light without heat. — Victor Hugo

Progress is the life-style of man. — Victor Hugo

Youth, even in its sorrows, always has a brilliancy of its own. — Victor Hugo

Geometry is deceptive; the hurricane alone is trustworthy. — Victor Hugo

Dreaming is happiness. Waiting is life. — Victor Hugo

Hope is the Word which God has written on the brow of every man. — Victor Hugo

It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live. — Victor Hugo

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

Was it possible that Napoleon should have won that battle? We answer No. Why? Because of Wellington? Because of Blucher? No. Because of God. — Victor Hugo

We are drawn to what we lack. No one loves daylight more than a blind man. — Victor Hugo

As he wished always to appear in mourning, he clothed himself with the night. — Victor Hugo

Toleration is the best religion. — Victor Hugo

Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant. — Victor Hugo

The shadow of the passions of the moment transversed this grand and gentle spirit occupied with eternal things. — Victor Hugo

Because things are not agreeable," said Jean Valjean, "that is no reason for being unjust towards God. — Victor Hugo

Whether true or false, what is said about men often has as much influence on their lives, and particularly on their destinies, as what they do. — Victor Hugo

When two souls have finally found each other, there is established between them a union which begins on earth and continues forever in heaven. — Victor Hugo

Memories are our strength. When night attempts to return, we must light up the great dates, as we would light torches. — Victor Hugo

Every step which the intelligence of Europe has taken has been in spite of the clerical party. — Victor Hugo

In 1482, Quasimodo was about twenty years of age; Claude Frollo, about thirty-six. One had grown up, the other had grown old. — Victor Hugo

Make thought a whirlwind. — Victor Hugo

To put everything in balance is good, to put everything in harmony is better. — Victor Hugo

To live a life which is a perpetual falsehood is to suffer unknown tortures. — Victor Hugo

Love is reducing the universe to one being. — Victor Hugo

One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas. — Victor Hugo

Look down and show some mercy if you can.
Look down, look down, upon your fellow man. — Victor Hugo

Nothing makes a man so adventurous as an empty pocket. — Victor Hugo

Nature has made a pebble and a female. The lapidary makes the diamond, and the lover makes the woman. — Victor Hugo

The great acts of love are done by those who are habitually performing small acts of kindness. — Victor Hugo

You see me no more comfortable in it than a cat coiffed with a calabash. — Victor Hugo

A house is built of logs and stone, of tiles and posts and piers; a home is built of loving deeds that stand a thousand years. — Victor Hugo

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 — Victor Hugo

If nobody loved, the sun would go out. — Victor Hugo

It is the property of grief to cause the childish side of man to reappear. — Victor Hugo

Life is a theatre set in which there are but few practicable entrances. — Victor Hugo

She gave anyone who saw her a sensation of April and of dawn. There was dew in her eyes. Cosette was a condensation of auroral light in womanly form. — Victor Hugo

You ask me what forces me to speak? a strange thing; my conscience. — Victor Hugo

What would be ugly in a garden constitutes beauty in a mountain. — Victor Hugo