Famous Victor Hugo Quotations

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"What a grand thing, to be loved! What a grander thing still, to love!"
by Victor Hugo
"A great artist is a great man in a great child."
by Victor Hugo
"A creditor is worse than a slave-owner; for the master owns only your person, but a creditor owns your dignity, and can command it."
by Victor Hugo
"A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil."
by Victor Hugo
"The man who does not know other languages, unless he is a man of genius, necessarily has deficiencies in his ideas."
by Victor Hugo
"The learned man knows that he is ignorant."
by Victor Hugo
"The last resort of kings, the cannonball. The last resort of the people, the paving stone."
by Victor Hugo
"The mountains, the forest, and the sea, render men savage; they develop the fierce, but yet do not destroy the human."
by Victor Hugo
"To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark."
by Victor Hugo
"We say that slavery has vanished from European civilization, but this is not true. Slavery still exists, but now it applies only to women and its name is prostitution."
by Victor Hugo
"When liberty returns, I will return."
by Victor Hugo
"When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age."
by Victor Hugo
"Curiosity is one of the forms of feminine bravery."
by Victor Hugo
"Common sense is in spite of, not as the result of education."
by Victor Hugo
"Despots play their part in the works of thinkers. Fettered words are terrible words. The writer doubles and trebles the power of his writing when a ruler imposes silence on the people. Something emerges from that enforced silence, a mysterious fullness which filters through and becomes steely in the thought. Repression in history leads to conciseness in the historian, and the rocklike hardness of much celebrated prose is due to the tempering of the tyrant."
by Victor Hugo
"Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers."
by Victor Hugo
"Freedom in art, freedom in society, this is the double goal towards which all consistent and logical minds must strive."
by Victor Hugo
"He who opens a school door, closes a prison."
by Victor Hugo
"He who is not capable of enduring poverty is not capable of being free."
by Victor Hugo
"Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization."
by Victor Hugo
"Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved."
by Victor Hugo
"Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause."
by Victor Hugo
"No one ever keeps a secret so well as a child."
by Victor Hugo
"Society is a republic. When an individual tries to lift themselves above others, they are dragged down by the mass, either by ridicule or slander."
by Victor Hugo
"My tastes are aristocratic, my actions democratic."
by Victor Hugo
"Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face."
by Victor Hugo
"Nations, like stars, are entitled to eclipse. All is well, provided the light returns and the eclipse does not become endless night. Dawn and resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul."
by Victor Hugo
"It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life."
by Victor Hugo
"Genius is a promontory jutting out into the infinite."
by Victor Hugo
"A mother's arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them."
by Victor Hugo
"Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters."
by Victor Hugo
"A compliment is like a kiss through a veil."
by Victor Hugo
"A HOUSE is built of logs and stone, Of piles and post and piers; A HOME is built of loving deeds, That stand a thousand years."
by Victor Hugo
"A library implies an act of faith."
by Victor Hugo
"A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labour and there is invisible labour."
by Victor Hugo
"A war between Europeans is a civil war."
by Victor Hugo
"All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come."
by Victor Hugo
"Almost all our desires, when examined, contain something too shameful to reveal."
by Victor Hugo
"Amnesty is as good for those who give it as for those who receive it. It has the admirable quality of bestowing mercy on both sides."
by Victor Hugo
"An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come."
by Victor Hugo
"An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise."
by Victor Hugo
"Architecture has recorded the great ideas of the human race. Not only every religious symbol, but every human thought has its page in that vast book."
by Victor Hugo
"As a means of contrast with the sublime, the grotesque is, in our view, the richest source that nature can offer."
by Victor Hugo
"Ask not the name of him who asks you for a bed. It is especially he whose name is a burden to him, who has need of an asylum (room)."
by Victor Hugo
"As the purse is emptied, the heart is filled."
by Victor Hugo
"At the shrine of friendship never say die, let the wine of friendship never run dry. (Les Miserables)"
by Victor Hugo
"Babylon violated diminishes Alexander; Rome enslaved diminishes Caesar; massacred Jerusalem diminishes Titus. Tyranny follows the tyrant. Woe to the man who leaves behind a shadow that bears his form."
by Victor Hugo
"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."
by Victor Hugo
"Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings."
by Victor Hugo
"Because one doesn't like the way things are is no reason to be unjust towards God."
by Victor Hugo
"Blessed be Providence which has given to each his toy: the doll to the child, the child to the woman, the woman to the man, the man to the devil!"
by Victor Hugo
"By putting forward the hands of the clock you shall not advance the hour."
by Victor Hugo
"But when ill indeed, Even dismissing the doctor don't always succeed."
by Victor Hugo
"Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees."
by Victor Hugo
"Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees"
by Victor Hugo
"Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees."
by Victor Hugo
"Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots."
by Victor Hugo
"Civil war? What does that mean? Is there any foreign war? Isn't every war fought between men, between brothers?"
by Victor Hugo
"Clearly he had his own strange way of judging things. I suspect he acquired it from the gospels."
by Victor Hugo
"Common sense is in spite of, not the result of, education."
by Victor Hugo
"Close by the Rights of Man, at the least set beside them, are the Rights of the Spirit."
by Victor Hugo
"Conscience is God present in man."
by Victor Hugo
"Concision in style, precision in thought, decision in life."
by Victor Hugo
"Dear God! how beauty varies in nature and art. In a woman the flesh must be like marble; in a statue the marble must be like flesh."
by Victor Hugo
"Despotism is a long crime."
by Victor Hugo
"Do not let it be your aim to be something, but to be someone."
by Victor Hugo
"Do you know what friendship is... it is to be brother and sister; two souls which touch without mingling, two fingers on one hand."
by Victor Hugo
"Doing nothing is happiness for children and misery for old men."
by Victor Hugo
"Dream no small dreams. They have no power to stir the souls of men."
by Victor Hugo
"Each man should frame life so that at some future hour fact and his dreaming meet."
by Victor Hugo
"Everything being a constant carnival, there is no carnival left."
by Victor Hugo
"Evil. Mistrust those who rejoice at it even more than those who do it."
by Victor Hugo
"Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age"
by Victor Hugo
"Forty is the old age of youth fifty is the youth of old age."
by Victor Hugo
"Genius: the superhuman in man."
by Victor Hugo
"From the oyster to the eagle, from the swine to the tiger, all animals are to be found in men and each of them exists in some man, sometimes several at the time. Animals are nothing but the portrayal of our virtues and vices made manifest to our eyes, the visible reflections of our souls. God displays them to us to give us food for thought."
by Victor Hugo
"Genius is a promontory jutting out of the infinite."
by Victor Hugo
"God was bored by him."
by Victor Hugo
"Habit is the nursery of errors."
by Victor Hugo
"Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come."
by Victor Hugo
"Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake."
by Victor Hugo
"Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace."
by Victor Hugo
"Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake."
by Victor Hugo
"He who every morning plans the transaction of the day and follows out that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through the maze of the most busy life. But where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidence, chaos will soon reign."
by 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."
by 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"
by Victor Hugo
"He, who every morning plans the transactions of the day, and follows that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through a labyrinth of the most busy life."
by Victor Hugo
"Hope is the word which God has written on the brow of every man"
by Victor Hugo
"Hope is the word which God has written on the brow of every man."
by Victor Hugo
"How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said."
by 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!"
by Victor Hugo
"I am an intelligent river which has reflected successively all the banks before which it has flowed by meditating only on the images offered by those changing shores."
by Victor Hugo
"I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses."
by Victor Hugo
"I love all men who think, even those who think otherwise than myself."
by Victor Hugo
"I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes, - and the stars through his soul."
by Victor Hugo
"I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes -- and the stars through his soul"
by Victor Hugo
"I put a Phrygian cap on the old dictionary."
by Victor Hugo
"I'm religiously opposed to religion."
by Victor Hugo
"If a man has his throat cut in Paris, it's a murder. If 50,000 people are murdered in the east, it is a question."
by Victor Hugo
"Idleness is the heaviest of all oppressions."
by Victor Hugo


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