Quotes by Victor Hugo

Life is the flower for which love is the honey.

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

Common sense is in spite of, not the result of, education.

People do not lack strength; they lack will.

Hope is the word which God has written on the brow of every man.

Civil war.... What did the words mean? Was there any such thing as foreign war? Was not all warfare between men warfare between brothers?

God created the flirt as soon as he made the fool.

The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.

A writer is a world trapped in a person.

There is only one thing stronger than all the armies of the world: and that is an idea whose time has come.

It is not easy to keep silent when silence is a lie.

Being good is easy, what is difficult is being just.

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.

Wisdom is a sacred communion.

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

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

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

Taste is the common sense of genius.

Perseverance, secret of all triumphs.

The wise man does not grow old, but ripens.

To reform a man, you must begin with his grandmother.

A man trying to escape never thinks himself sufficiently concealed.

Dirt has been shrewdly termed misplaced material.

As for methods of prayer, all are good, as long as they are sincere.

Inspiration and genius one and the same.

The greatest happiness of life it the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

Teach the ignorant as much as you can.

He who opens a school door closes a prison.

He does not weep who does not see.

Good night! Good night! Far flies the light; But still God's love Shall shine above, Making all bright, Good night! Good night!

I shall be great and you rich, because we love each other.

It seemed to her almost that she was pretty. This threw her in a singularly troubled state of mind. Up to that moment she had never thought of her face.

A bird alone could have extricated himself from that place.

Reaction a boat which is going against the current but which does not prevent the river from flowing on.

I have been loving you a little more every minute since this morning.

There is no rapture in the love which is prompted by esteem; such affection is lasting, not passionate.

At the shrine of friendship never say die, let the wine of friendship never run dry.

England has two books; the Bible and Shakespeare. England made Shakespeare, but the Bible made England.

There are no trifles in the human story, no trifling leaves on the tree.

It was hunger that drove us to exploration. And it took a depression to teach us the real value of a job.

He sought to transform the grief that looks down into the grave by showing it the grief that looks up to the stars.

He was not his father, and this was not his work; but he was the master, and this was his masterpiece.

Take away time is money, and what is left of England? take away cotton is king, and what is left of America?

Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age.

There is something more terrible than a hell of suffering -- a hell of boredom.

Algebra applies to the clouds.

Human society, the world, and the whole of mankind is to be found in the alphabet.

Revolution is the larva of civilization.

The earth is a great piece of stupidity.

If suffer we must, let's suffer on the heights.

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

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.

To pay compliments to the one we love is the first method of caressing, a demi-audacity venturing. A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.

A thousand men enslaved fear one beast free.

Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions.

All roads are blocked to a philosophy which reduces everything to the word 'no.' To 'no' there is only one answer and that is 'yes.'

Great buildings, like great mountains, are the work of centuries.

Cheerfulness is like money well expended in charity; the more we dispense of it, the greater our possession.

All men are made of the same clay.

What matters deafness of the ear, when the mind hears? The one true deafness, the incurable deafness, is that of the mind.

I'd rather be hissed at for a good verse, than applauded for a bad one.

Paris, viewed from the towers of Notre Dame in the cool dawn of a summer morning, is a delectable and a magnificent sight; and the Paris of that period must have been eminently so.

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.

All who suffer are full of hatred; all who live drag a remorse: the dead alone have broken their chains.

A fall from such a height is rarely straight downwards.

You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea.

Love is a fault; be it so. Fantine was innocence floating upon the surface of this fault.

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

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

Nothing discernible to the eye of the spirit is more brilliant or obscure than man; nothing is more formidable, complex, mysterious, and infinite. There is a prospect greater than the sea, and it is the sky; there is a prospect greater than the sky, and it is the human soul.

Geniuses are disconcerting. Their comings and goings in the ideal world give one vertigo ... They have a telescope in one eye and a microscope in the other.

We are given up to those gods, those monsters, those giants, -- our thoughts.

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

What a gloomy thing, not to know the address of one's soul.

The saints were his friends, and blessed him; the monsters were his friends, and guarded him.

And the dream that our mind had sketched in haste Shall others continue, but never complete. For none upon earth can achieve his scheme; The best as the worst are futile here: We wake at the self-same point of the dream, All is here begun, and finished elsewhere.

There are, as we know, powerful and illustrious atheists. At bottom, led back to the truth by their very force, they are not absolutely sure that they are atheists; it is with them only a question of definition, and in any case, if they do not believe in God, being great minds, they prove God.

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

If no one loved, the sun would go out.

To breathe Paris is to preserve one's soul.

Happiness lies for those who cry, those who hurt, those who have searched, and those who have tried for only they can appreciate the importance of people who have touched their lives.

Life is a flower of which love is honey.

People do not read stupidities with impunity.

We pray together, we are afraid together, and then we go to sleep. Even if Satan came into the house, no one would interfere. After all, what is there to fear in this house? There is always one with us who is the strongest. Satan may visit our house, but the good Lord lives here.

Women play with their beauty as children do with their knives. They wound themselves with it.

History has its truth; and so has legend hers.

There is a way of meeting error while on the road of truth.

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

People overwhelmed with trouble do not look behind; they know only too well that misfortune follows them.

The most terrible of motives and the most unanswerable of responses: Because.

By making himself a priest he made himself a demon.

I have a dream my life would be. So different from this hell I'm living. So different now from what it seem. Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.

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

I like the laughter that opens the lips and the heart, shows at the same time the pearls and the soul.

Anger may be foolish and absurd, and one may be wrongly irritated, but a man never feels outraged unless in some respect he is fundamentally right.

He reached for his pocket, and found there, only reality.

Cities make ferocious men because they make corrupt men. The mountains, the sea, the forest, make savage men; they develop the fierce side, but often without destroying the humane side.

The sadness which reigned everywhere was but an excuse for unfailing kindness.

One cannot be a good historian of the outward, visible world without giving some thought to the hidden, private life of ordinary people; and on the other hand one cannot be a good historian of this inner life without taking into account outward events where these are relevant.

Above all, you can believe in Providence in either of two ways, either as thirst believes in the orange, or as the ass believes in the whip.

Every man who has in his soul a secret feeling of revolt against any act of the State, of life, or of destiny, is on the verge of riot; and so soon as it appears, he begins to quiver, and to feel himself borne away by the whirlwind.

In love there are no friends everywhere where there is a pretty woman hostility is open.

Ideas can no more flow backward than can a river.

For true poetry, complete poetry, consists in the harmony of contraries. Hence, it is time to say aloud -- and it is here above allthat exceptions prove the rule -- that everything that exists in nature exists in art.

He would give all of his clothes to his servant, admonishing him NOT to return them until he had completed his day's work.

Between the government which does evil and the people who accept it -- there is a certain shameful solidarity.

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.

During a wise man's whole life, his destiny holds his philosophy in a state of siege.

For sight is woman-like and shuns the old.

Let us leave to the brain what belongs to it, and agree that the work of the men of genius is of the superhuman, the offspring of man.

The soul that loves and suffers is in the sublime state.

I was confided to your loyalty and accepted by your treason; you offer my death to those to whom you had promised my life. Do you know who it is you are destroying here? It is yourself.

When a person opens a book, he can never be in prison.

God secludes Himself; but the thinker listens at the door.

If you wish to understand what Revolution is, call it Progress; and if you wish to understand what Progress is, call it Tomorrow.

Vulgarity is an old Narcissus who adores himself and applauds the common vulgarity.

The devotion of one man had given strength and courage to all.

Knowledge is a weight added to conscience.

The terrible shock of his sentence had in some way broken that wall which separates us from the mystery of things beyond and which we call life.

On coming out of the chapel, a well can be seen on the left. There are two in this yard. You ask, Why is there no bucket and no pulley to this one? Because no water is drawn from it now. Why is no more water drawn from it? Because it is full of skeletons.

Waterloo is a battle of the first rank won by a captain of the second.

This conflict between right and fact has endured since the origins of society. To bring the duel to an end, to consolidate the pure ideal with the human reality, to make the right peacefully interpenetrate the fact, and the fact the right, this is the work of the wise.

The future has many names: For the weak, it means the unattainable. For the fearful, it means the unknown. For the courageous, it means opportunity.

Of all the things that God has made, the human heart is the one which sheds the most light, alas! and the most darkness.

O darkness, the sky is a gloomy precinct Whose door you close, and whose key the soul owns; And night divides itself in half, being diabolical and holy, Between Ilis, the black angel, and Christ, the starry Human Being.

Dry happiness is like dry bread. We eat, but we do not dine. I wish for the superfluous, for the useless, for the extravagant, for the too much, for that which is not good for anything.

To introduce a new play only six weeks after another has been banned is also a way to speak one's piece to the government. It proves that art and liberty can grow back in one night under the clumsy foot which crushes them.

Does not beauty confer a benefit upon us, even by the simple fact of being beautiful?

A poet who is a bad man is a degraded being, baser and more culpable than a bad man who is not a poet.

In winter there is no heat, no light, no noon, evening touches morning, there is fog, and mist, the window is frosted, and you cannot see clearly. The sky is but the mouth of a cave. The whole day is the cave.... Frightful season! Winter changes into stone the water of heaven and the heart of man.

Suffering engenders passion; and while the prosperous blind themselves, or go to sleep, the hatred of the unfortunate classes kindles its torch at some sullen or ill-constituted mind, which is dreaming in a corner, and sets to work to examine society. The examination of hatred is a terrible thing.

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

Don't educate your children to be rich. Educate them to be happy, so they know the value of things, not the price.

Years place at last a venerable crown upon a head.

Earnestness is the salt of eloquence.

These are true felicities. No joy beyond these joys. Love is the only ecstasy, everything else weeps.

The man who fights against his own country is never a hero.

At the approach of a certain dark hour, the light of Heaven fills those who are quitting the light of Earth.

I repeat, whether we be Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns us all.

A saint addicted to excessive self-abnegation is a dangerous associate; he may infect you with poverty, and a stiffening of those joints which are needed for advancement-in a word, with more renunciation than you care for-and so you flee the contagion.

Heaven, on occasion, half opens its arms to us; and that is the great moment.

So a voice in the mountain is enough to let loose an avalanche. A word too much may be followed by a caving in. If the word had not been spoken, it would not have happened.

Who then understands the reciprocal flux and reflux of the infinitely great and the infinitely small, the echoing of causes in the abysses of being, and the avalanches of creation?

My day's work will begin again the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley.

Genius is rare because the means of becoming one have not been available.

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

Everything speaks: the flowing airstream and the sailing halycon, the blade of grass, the flower, the bud, the element; did you imagine the universe to be otherwise?

One only needs to see a smile in a white crape bonnet in order to enter the palace of dreams.

A day will come when a cannon will be exhibited in museums, just as instruments of torture are now, and the people will be astonished that such a thing could have been.

Without seeking to comprehend the incomprehensible, he gazed upon it. He did not study God; he was dazzled by Him.

There is a secret drawer in every woman's heart.

Everything bows to success, even grammar.

Nothing can be sadder or more profound than to see a thousand things for the first and last time.

I am in the night. There is a being who has gone away and carried the heavens with her. Oh! to be laid side by side in the same tomb, hand clasped in hand, and from time to time, in the darkness, to caress a finger gently, that would suffice for my eternity.

The miserable's name is Man; he is agonizing in all climes, and he is groaning in all languages.

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

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.

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.

All the human and animal manure which the world wastes, if returned to the land, instead of being thrown into the sea, would suffice to nourish the world.

Hypocrisy is nothing, in fact, but a horrible hopefulness.

I refuse the oration of all churches. I ask a prayer of all souls. I believe in God.

He asked himself... whether it was not outrageous for society to treat thus precisely those of its members who were the least well endowed in the division of goods made by chance, and consequently the most deserving of consideration.

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

God manifests himself to us in the first degree through the life of the universe, and in the second degree through the thought of man. The second manifestation is not less holy than the first. The first is named Nature, the second is named Art.

Argot is both a literary and a social phenomenon. What is argot, properly speaking? Argot is the language of misery.

What is admirable in the clash of young minds is that no one can foresee the spark that sets off an explosion or predict what kind of explosion it will be.

He sleeps. Although his fate was very strange, he lived. He died when he had no longer his angel. The thing came to pass simply, of itself, as the night comes when day is gone.

Cosette was not very timid by nature. There flowed in her veins some of the blood of the bohemian and the adventuress who runs barefoot. It will be remembered that she was more of a lark than a dove. There was a foundation of wildness and bravery in her.

He did not study God; he was dazzled by him.

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

We do not comprehend everything, but we insult nothing.

On this point, the priest and the philosopher agree: We must die.

When we are at the end of life, to die means to go away; when we are at the beginning, to go away means to die.

There are many tongues to talk, and but few heads to think.

What is said about men often has as much influence upon their lives, and especially upon their destinies, as what they do.

Great grief is a divine and terrible radiance which transfigures the wretched.

For there are many great deeds done in the small struggles of life.

Work is the law of life, and to reject it as boredom is to submit to it as torment.

Love is like a tree: it grows by itself, roots itself deeply in our being and continues to flourish over a heart in ruin. The inexplicable fact is that the blinder it is, the more tenacious it is. It is never stronger than when it is completely unreasonable.

Philosophy is the microscope of thought.

Where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and which has the wider vision?

He loved books, those undemanding but faithful friends.

Love each other dearly always. There is scarcely anything else in the world but that: to love one another.

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

A tempest ceases, a cyclone passes over, a wind dies down, a broken mast can be replaced, a leak can be stopped, a fire extinguished, but what will become of this enormous brute of bronze?

I encountered in the street a penniless young man who was in love. His hat was old and his jacket worn, with holes at the elbows; water soaked through his shoes, but starlight flooded through his soul.

Marius was of the temperament that sinks into grief and remains there; Cosette was of the sort that plunges in and comes out again.

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

A bit of mould is a pleiad of flowers; a nebula is an ant-hill of stars.

To rove about, musing, that is to say loitering, is, for a philosopher, a good way of spending time.

At least you are mine! Soon -- in a few months, perhaps, my angel will sleep in my arms, will awaken in my arms, will live there. All your thought at all moments, all your looks will be for me; all my thought, all my moments, all my looks will be for you!

Human thought has no limit. At its risk and peril, it analyzes and dissects its own fascination. We could almost say that, by a sort of splendid reaction, it fascinates nature; the mysterious world surrounding us returns what it receives; it is likely that contemplators are contemplated.

Dear God! how beauty varies in nature and art.

It is only barbarous nations who have a sudden growth after a victory.