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Victor Hugo Quotes
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308 Quotes to Uplift Your Spirit and Guide You with Timeless Wisdom

Explore Victor Hugo's profound insights and timeless wisdom. Be inspired by powerful quotes on belief, love, and more. Let the words of this literary icon uplift your spirit and guide you.

Victor-Marie Hugo was a highly acclaimed French Romantic writer and politician, hailed as one of the greatest French writers of all time. With a literary career spanning over six decades, he excelled in various genres and forms of writing. His notable works include the novels "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame" and "Les Misérables," as well as poetry collections like "Les Contemplations" and "La Légende des siècles." Furthermore, his influence extended beyond literature, inspiring musical adaptations such as the opera Rigoletto and the musicals Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris. Additionally, Hugo championed social causes like the elimination of capital punishment and showcased his artistic talents through over 4,000 drawings.

Initially a staunch royalist, Hugo's perspectives underwent a significant transformation as he grew older. He developed an unwavering support for republicanism and actively engaged in political activities, serving both as a deputy and a senator. Throughout his work, he fearlessly addressed pressing political and social issues while embodying the artistic trends prevalent during his era. His resolute stance against absolute power coupled with his literary achievements earned him recognition as a national hero.

Victor Hugo passed away on May 22, 1885 at the age of 83. His legacy was honored with an elaborate state funeral held at the Panthéon in Paris, which drew an astounding attendance of over two million people—the largest gathering in French history.

✵ 26. February 1802 – 22. May 1885  •  Other names Victor Marie Hugo, Виктор Гюго
Victor Hugo photo
Victor Hugo: 308 quotes51 likes

Victor Hugo Quotes

“Gavroche had fallen only to rise again; he sat up, a long stream of blood rolled down his face, he raised both arms in air, looked in the direction whence the shot came, and began to sing.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“Be happy without picking flaws.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”

Victor Hugo

Often attributed to Hugo as a paraphrase of a similar idea in his Histore d&#x27;un Crime (1877): &quot;One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas&quot;, the wording of this famous statement actually more closely resembles a passage from the relatively obscure Les Francs-Tireurs (1861) by Gustave Aimard, p. 68 https://books.google.com/books/about/Les_francs_tireurs.html?id=mKI4AQAAIAAJ: <br class="br">Il y a quelque chose de plus puissant que la force brutale des baïonnettes: c&#x27;est l&#x27;idée dont le temps est venu et l&#x27;heure est sonnée. <br class="br">There is something more powerful than the brute force of bayonets: it is the idea whose time has come and hour struck. <br class="br">Translated into English as The Freebooters : A Story of the Texan War (1861) https://archive.org/details/freebootersstory00aima, p. 57, Ward &amp; Lock edition <br class="br">Misattributed <br class="br">Variant: More powerful than the mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.

“I was dying when you came.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

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

Victor Hugo

“To err is human. To loaf is Parisian.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Les feuilles d'automne (1831)
Variant: To divinise is human, to humanise is divine.
Source: Les Misérables

“You are adorable, mademoiselle. I study your feet with the microscope and your soul with the telescope.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“The earth is a great piece of stupidity.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“A writer is a world trapped in a person.”

Victor Hugo

“Woe, alas, to those who have loved only bodies, forms, appearances! Death will rob them of everything. Try to love souls, you will find them again.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

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

Victor Hugo

"Thoughts," Postscriptum de ma vie, in Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography, Funk and Wagnalls (1907) as translated by Lorenzo O'Rourke
Source: Intellectual Autobiography: Ideas on Literature, Philosophy and Religion

“There is neither a foreign war nor a civil war; there is only just and unjust war.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“It is a terrible thing to be happy! How pleased we are with it! How all-sufficient we think it! How, being in possession of the false aim of life, happiness, we forget the true aim, duty!”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“‎"Dost thou understand? I love thee!" he cried again."What love!" said the unhappy girl with a shudder. He resumed,--"The love of a damned soul.”

Victor Hugo book The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Source: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

“He who contemplates the depths of Paris is seized with vertigo.
Nothing is more fantastic. Nothing is more tragic.
Nothing is more sublime.”

Victor Hugo

“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.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real that we exist, it is by the ideal that we live.”

Victor Hugo

“But secondly you say 'society must exact vengeance, and society must punish'. Wrong on both counts. Vengeance comes from the individual and punishment from God.”

Victor Hugo book The Last Day of a Condemned Man

Source: The Last Day of a Condemned Man

“There comes an hour when protest no longer suffices; after philosophy there must be action; the strong hand finishes what the idea has sketched.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“Great griefs exhaust. They discourage us with life. The man into whom they enter feels something taken from him. In youth, their visit is sad; later on, it is ominous.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over, this is recognised: that the human race has been harshly treated, but that it has advanced.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“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

“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.”

Victor Hugo

“God will bless you,' said he, 'you are an angel since you take care of the flowers.'
'No,' she replied. 'I am the devil, but that's all the same to me.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Miserables

“To study in Paris is to be born in Paris!”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“To destroy abuses is not enough; Habits must also be changed. The windmill has gone, but the wind is still there."
~old man G--- to Monseigneur Bienvenu Myriel”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“A cannonball travels only two thousand miles an hour; light travels two hundred thousand miles a second. Such is the superiority of Jesus Christ over Napoleon.”

Victor Hugo

“Are you afraid of the good you might do?”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“We need those who pray constantly to compensate for those who do not pray at all.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“Another story must begin!”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“He who despairs is wrong.”

Victor Hugo

Source: Les Misérables, tome I/3

“… there is a point when the unfortunate and the infamous are associated and confused in a word, a mortal word, les miserables”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“He left her. She was dissatisfied with him. He had preferred to incur her anger rather than cause her pain. He had kept all the pain for himself.”

Victor Hugo book The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Source: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

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

Victor Hugo book The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Source: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

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

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“… Man lives by affirmation even more than he does by bread.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“If you are stone, be magnetic; if a plant, be sensitive; but if you are human be love.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“I see black light (his last words)”

Victor Hugo

“Children at once accept joy and happiness with quick familiarity, being themselves naturally all happiness and joy.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“Be a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings.”

Victor Hugo

“Every day has its great grief or its small anxiety…. One cloud is dispelled, another forms. There is hardly one day in a hundred of real joy and bright sunshine.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables