Victor Hugo: Trending quotes

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Victor Hugo: 616 quotes51 likes

“Was it possible that Napoleon should win the battle of Waterloo? We answer, No! Why? Because of Wellington? Because of Blücher? No! Because of God! For Bonaparte to conquer at Waterloo was not the law of the nineteenth century. It was time that this vast man should fall. He had been impeached before the Infinite! He had vexed God! Waterloo was not a battle. It was the change of front of the Universe!”

Victor Hugo

"The Battle of Waterloo", reported in Oliver Ernesto Branch, ed., The Hamilton Speaker (1878), p. 53

“You insist on the example [of the death penalty]. Why? For what it teaches. What do you want to teach with your example? That thou shalt not kill. And how do you teach thou shalt not kill? By killing.”

Victor Hugo

Vous tenez à l’exemple [de la peine de mort]. Pourquoi? Pour ce qu’il enseigne. Que voulez-vous enseigner avec votre exemple? Qu’il ne faut pas tuer. Et comment enseignez-vous qu’il ne faut pas tuer? En tuant. "Plaidoyer contre la peine de mort" http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Plaidoyer_contre_la_peine_de_mort_-_Victor_Hugo [An argument against the death penalty], Assemblée Constituante, Paris (15 September 1848)

“And the navy, Papa, will come to Malta.”

Victor Hugo

Et la marine va, papa, venir à Malte.
Palindrome attributed to Hugo on the internet, but in no published sources yet found.
Disputed

“God became a man, granted. The devil became a woman.”

Victor Hugo

Dieu s'est fait homme; soit. Le diable s'est fait femme! Ruy Blas (1838), Act II, Scene V http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Ruy_Blas#ACTE_2_SCENE_5

“The need of the immaterial is the most deeply rooted of all needs. One must have bread; but before bread, one must have the ideal.”

Victor Hugo

Ce besoin de l’immatériel est le plus vivace de tous. Il faut du pain; mais avant le pain, il faut l’idéal. " Les fleurs http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Proses_philosophiques_-_Les_Fleurs#IV," (ca. 1860 - 1865), from Oeuvres complètes (1909); published in English as The Memoirs of Victor Hugo, trans. John W. Harding (1899), Chapter VI: Love in Prison, part II

“Socialism, or the Red Republic, is all one; for it would tear down the tricolour and set up the red flag. It would make penny pieces out of the Column Vendome. It would knock down the statue of Napoleon and raise up that of Marat in its stead. It would suppress the Académie, the Ecole Polytechnique, and the Legion of Honour. To the grand device Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, it would add “Ou la mort. It would bring about a general bankruptcy. It would ruin the rich without enriching the poor. It would destroy labour, which gives to each one his bread. It would abolish property and family. It would march about with the heads of the proscribed on pikes, fill the prisons with the suspected, and empty them by massacres. It would convert France into the country of gloom. It would strangle liberty, stifle the arts, silence thought, and deny God. It would bring into action these two fatal machines, one of which never works without the other—the assignat press and the guillotine. In a word, it would do in cold blood what the men of 1793 did in fever, and after the grand horrors which our fathers saw, we should have the horrible in all that was low and small.”

Victor Hugo

Statement of May 1848, as quoted in Paris Under the Commune : Or, Seventy-Three Days of the Second Siege (1871) by John Leighton

“Philosophy is the microscope of thought. Everything desires to flee from it, but nothing escapes it.”

Victor Hugo

“They had done him the honor to take him for a madman, but had set him free on discovering that he was only a poet.”

Victor Hugo book The Man Who Laughs

The Man Who Laughs (1869)

“He who is a legend in his own time is ruled by that legend. It may begin in absolute innocence, but, to cover up flaws and maintain the myth of Divine Power, one must employ desperate measures.”

Victor Hugo

Attributed to Hugo in Old Gods Almost Dead : The 40-year Odyssey of the Rolling Stones (2001), by Stephen Davis, p. 557; but sourced to Illuminations by Arthur Rimbaud in Jaco : The Extraordinary and Tragic Life of Jaco Pastorius (2006) by Bill Milkowski, p. iii
Disputed

“There is now, in France, in each village, a lighted torch—the schoolmaster—and a mouth which blows upon it—the curé.”

Victor Hugo book The History of a Crime

Il y a maintenant en France dans chaque village un flambeau allumé, le maître d'école, et une bouche qui souffle dessus, le curé. Histoire d'un crime. Déposition d'un témoin (1877), Deuxième Journée. La lutte, ch. III: La barricade Saint-Antoine T. H. Joyce and Arthur Locker (tr.), The History of a Crime: The Testimony of an Eye-Witness (1877), The Second Day, Chapter III, p. 120 http://books.google.com/books?id=CT1BkrtaFlIC&pg=PA120&dq=%22There+is+now,+in+France,%22 Translation: In every French village there is now a lighted torch, the schoolmaster; and a mouth trying to blow it out, the priest. Huntington Smith (tr.), History of a Crime (1888), The Second Day, Chapter III, p. 187 http://books.google.com/books?id=idfUAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA187&dq=%22In+every+French+village+there+is+now+a+lighted+torch%22 Variants: There is in every village a torch: The schoolteacher/teacher. And an extinguisher: The priest/clergyman.

“Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. Of that divine tear and that human smile is composed the sweetness of the present civilization.”

Victor Hugo

Jésus a pleuré, Voltaire a souri; c’est de cette larme divine et de ce sourire humain qu’est faite la douceur de la civilisation actuelle. Speech, "Le centenaire de Voltaire" http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Actes_et_paroles_-_Depuis_l%E2%80%99exil_-_1878#II_LE_CENTENAIRE_DE_VOLTAIRE, on the 100th anniversary of the death of Voltaire, Théâtre de la Gaîté, Paris (30 May 1878); published in Actes et paroles - Depuis l'exil (1878)

“Music…is the vapour of art. It is to poetry what revery is to thought, what the fluid is to the liquid, what the ocean of clouds is to the ocean of waves.”

Victor Hugo book William Shakespeare

La musique...est la vapeur de l’art. Elle est à la poésie ce que la rêverie est à la pensée, ce que le fluide est au liquide, ce que l’océan des nuées est à l’océan des ondes.
Part I, Book II, Chapter IV
William Shakespeare (1864)

“Literal translations:”

Victor Hugo book The History of a Crime

On résiste à l'invasion des armées; on ne résiste pas à l'invasion des idées. One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas. One withstands the invasion of armies; one does not withstand the invasion of ideas. Histoire d'un Crime (The History of a Crime) [written 1852, published 1877], Conclusion, ch. X. Trans. T.H. Joyce and Arthur Locker http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Histoire_d%E2%80%99un_crime_-_Conclusion#X. Alternative translations and paraphrased variants: One cannot resist an idea whose time has come. No one can resist an idea whose time has come. Nothing is stronger than an idea whose time has come. Armies cannot stop an idea whose time has come. No army can stop an idea whose time has come. Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come. There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come. Many of these paraphrases have a closer match in a passage from Gustave Aimard's earlier-published novel Les Francs-Tireurs (1861): there is something more powerful than the brute force of bayonets: it is the idea whose time has come and hour struck Original French: Il y a quelque chose de plus puissant que la force brutale des baïonnettes: c'est l'idée dont le temps est venu et l'heure est sonnée Source: [The Freebooters, Gustave, Aimard, (tr. unknown), 1861, London, Ward and Lock, 57, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/chi.087603619?urlappend=%3Bseq=67] Source: [Les Francs Tireurs, Gustave, Aimard, 1861, Paris, Amyot, 68, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.$b596684?urlappend=%3Bseq=76]

“To love is to act”

Victor Hugo

Aimer, c'est agir
Last words of his diary, written two weeks before his death, published in Victor Hugo : Complete Writings (1970), edited by Jean-Jacques Pauvert

“As for how you pray, the words do not matter if they are sincere. Turn your prayer book upside down and face the infinite.”

Victor Hugo

“If we're just a thousand, then, here I am! Even if
They're just a hundred, still I face Sylla;
If ten still stand, I'll be the tenth;
And if there is only one left, I'll be this one!”

Victor Hugo

“He is asleep. Though his mettle was sorely tried,
He lived, and when he lost his angel, died.
It happened calmly, on its own.
The way night comes when day is done.”

Victor Hugo

“Sing, laugh; be happy, be famous;
Each one of you will soon be in the darkness.”

Victor Hugo

“I see a new light.”

Victor Hugo

“Let us have faith.
No, let us not be cast down.
To despair is to desert.
Let us look to the future.
The future,—no one knows what tempests still separate us from port, but the port, the distant and radiant port, is in sight; the future, we repeat, is the republic for all men; let us add, the future is peace with all men.”

Victor Hugo