Victor Hugo quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Victor Hugo on Wise Famous Quotes.

Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.

Is it not the best pity, when a man has a sore point, not to touch it at all?

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

It is most pleasant to commit a just action which is disagreeable to someone whom one does not like.

The little people must be sacred to the big ones, and it is from the rights of the weak that the duty of the strong is comprised.

Love resembles a tree: it bends under its own weight, deeply rooted in our being and sometimes turns green in the ruins of a heart.

When one is at the end of one's life, to die means to go away; when one is at the beginning of it, to go away means to die.

In principle any revolt strengthens the government it fails to overthrow.

To have debts is to possess something.

The ox suffers, the cart complains.

Part 1
A Just Man

Men become accustomed to poison by degrees

Is it not when the fall is the lowest that charity ought to be the greatest?

We are not loved by our friends for what we are; rather, we are loved in spite of what we are.

The first symptom of love in a young man is shyness; the first symptom in a woman, it's boldness.

I put a Phrygian cap on the old dictionary.

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

Poetry contains philosophy as the soul contains reason.

Genuflection before the idol or the dollar destroys the muscles which walk and the will that moves.

But you must have a lady"s maid."
"Don't I have Marius?

The world is the expanding Greece and Greece is the shrinking world.

Whom man kill, God restores to life; whom the brothers pursue the Father redeems. Pray and believe and go onward into life. You Father is there.

If you don't build castles in the air you won't build anything on the ground.

It was a garbage heap, and it was Sinai.

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

flaps and buttons. She concealed her gray hair

To see nothing of a person makes it possible to credit him with all the perfection.

There are things stronger than the strongest man ...

Social prosperity means man happy, the citizen free, the nation great.

Desiring always to be in mourning, he clothed himself with night.

If you are a stone, be adamant; if you are a plant, be the sensitive plant; if you are a man, be love.

Nothing is more dangerous than discontinued labor; it is habit lost. A habit easy to abandon, difficult to resume.

CHAPTER VIII - PHILOSOPHY AFTER DRINKING

Blind is he who will not see!

To be wicked does not insure prosperity - for the inn did not succeed well.

Serious men," "grave persons" and "reasonable people"; favorite locutions of our sad world where egotism takes its word of command from pedantry

A war between Europeans is a civil war.

Smallness in a great man seems smaller by its disproportion with all the rest.

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.

Dying is nothing. What's terrible is not to live.

The beautiful is just as useful as the useful.

Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing.

The learned man knows that he is ignorant.

Words being but a breath, the stir of awakened minds is like the rustling of leaves.

To-morrow fulfils its work irresistibly, and it is already fulfilling it to-day. It

Winter changes the water of heaven and the heart of man into a stone.

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.

Be like the bird that, passing on her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings.

When a man does wrong, he should do all the wrong he can; it is madness to stop half-way in crime!

It is painful to break the sad links to the past

Not being heard is no reason for silence.

The presence of angels is an announcement of Paradise.

I'm religiously opposed to religion.

The soul has illusions as the bird has wings: it is supported by them.

As for the bishop, the sight of the guillotine was a great shock to him, from which he recovered only slowly.

A great artist is a great man in a great child.

As long as ignorance and misery exist in the world, books like the one you are about to read are, perhaps, not entirely useless

Nothing oppresses the heart like symmetry.

Slaying wealth is not the same thing as dividing it.

Faith is necessary to men; woe to him who believes in nothing!

Everything bows to success, even grammar.

Do not ask the name of the person who seeks a bed for the night. He who is reluctant to give his name is the one who most needs shelter.

There are instincts which respond to all the chance meetings in life. The little girl was not afraid.

What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past.

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

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

It is nothing to die; it is horrible not to live.

If no one loved, the sun would go out.

I don't want your money," said she.

If you want to civilize a man, begin with his grandmother.

If God had intended that man should go backward, he would have given him eyes in the back of his head.

In every cradle decked with rosy wreath Lurk germs of death.

Hatred becomes, within a given time, the hatred of society, then the hatred of the human race, then the hatred of creation.

He had never known a "kind woman friend" in his native parts. He had not had the time to fall in love.

The ideal and the beautiful are identical; the ideal corresponds to the idea, and beauty to form; hence idea and substance are cognate.

our judgement of a man would be much sounder were it based on what he dreams rather than on what he thinks.

Gentlemen, my father always detested me because I could not understand mathematics. I understand only love and liberty.

Sire," said M. Myriel, "you are looking at a good man, and I at a great man. Each of us can profit by it.

And do you know Monsieur Marius? I believe I was a little in love with you.

No man is more unhappy than the one who is never in adversity; the greatest affliction of life is never to be afflicted.

You would have imagined her at one moment a maniac, at another a queen.

Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices are the real murderers. The great dangers lie within ourselves.

Fever supports the sick man, and love the lover.

Doing nothing is happiness for children and misery for old men.

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.

Phoebus de Chateaupers likewise came to a 'tragic end': he married.

Every bird that flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw.

No religion but blasphemes a little.

When a man is out of sight, it is not too long before he is out of mind.

One sees qualities at a distance and defects at close range.

More powerful than the mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.

First problem. To produce wealth. Second problem. To distribute it.

For love is like a tree; it grows of itself; it send its roots deep into our being, and often continues to grow green over a heart in ruins.

Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.

The English took the eagle and Austrians the eaglet.
[Fr., L'Angleterre prit l'aigle, et l'Autriche l'aiglon.]

The mountains, the forest, and the sea, render men savage; they develop the fierce, but yet do not destroy the human.

One of the hardest labours of the just man is to expunge from his soul a malevolence which it is difficult to efface.

Loving is almost a substitute for thinking. Love is a burning forgetfulness of all other things. How shall we ask passion to be logical?

CHAPTER I - M. MYRIEL

There are accepted revolutions, revolutions which are called revolutions; there are refused revolutions, which are called riots.