Victor Hugo Quotes

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

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

“To love beauty is to see light.”

“If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away.”

“One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas.”

“I think, therefore I doubt.”

“In joined hands there is still some token of hope, in the clinched fist none.”

“He who every morning plans the transactions of that day and follows that plan carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life.”

“It is not enough to be happy, one must be content.”

“So long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Miserables cannot fail to be of use.”

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

“Monsieur' to a convict is a glass of water to a man dying of thirst at sea; ignominy thirsts for respect.”

“Ah," cried Gavroche, "what does this mean? It rains again!… If this continues, I withdraw my subscription.”

“… It all seemed to him to have disappeared as if behind a curtain at a theater. There are such curtains that drop in life. God is moving on to the next act.”

“Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions”

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

“There is no vacuum in the human heart. Certain demolitions take place, and it is well that they do, but on condition that they are followed by reconstructions.”

“Jean Prouvaire was timid only in repose. Once excited, he burst forth, a sort of mirth accentuated his enthusiasm, and he was at once both laughing and lyric.”

“Love is a fault; so be it.”

“His judgement demonstrates that one can be a genius and understand nothing of an art that is not one's own.”

“To a gargoyle on the ramparts of Notre Dame as Esmeralda rides off with Gringoire Quasimodo says. "Why was I not made of stone like thee?”

“The delight we inspire in others has this enchanting peculiarity that, far from being diminished like every other reflection, it returns to us more radiant than ever.”

“Good actions are the invisible hinges on the doors of heaven.”

“People weighed down with troubles do not look back; they know only too well that misfortune stalks them.”

“The mother… swinging the children by pulling on a length of string, while at the same time she kept and eye on them with that protective watchfulness, half animal, half angelic, which is the quality of motherhood.”

“You look at a star for two reasons, because it is luminous, and because it is impenetrable. You have beside you a sweeter radiance and a greater mystery, woman.”

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

“Be serious,” said Enjolras. “I am wild,” replied Grantaire.”

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

“The women laughed and wept; the crowd stamped their feet enthusiastically, for at that moment Quasimodo was really beautiful. He was handsome — this orphan, this foundling, this outcast.”

“If he had had all Peru in his pocket, he would certainly have given it to this dancer; but Gringoire had not Peru in his pocket; and besides, America was not yet discovered. (p. 66)”

“The infinite exists. It is there. If the infinite had nothewould be its limit; it would not be the infinite; in other words, it would not be. But it is. Then it has aThisof the infinite is God.”

“At the moment when her eyes closed, when all feeling vanished in her, she thought that she felt a touch of fire imprinted on her lips, a kiss more burning than the red-hot iron of the executioner.”

“There are people who observe the rules of honor as one observes the stars, from a great distance.”

“Man is not a circle with a single center; he is an ellipse with two focii. Facts are one, ideas are the other.”

“France is great because she is France.”

“Sometimes he used a spade in his garden, and sometimes he read and wrote. He had but one name for these two kinds of labor; he called them gardening. ‘The Spirit is a garden,’ said he”

“Die, very good, but do not make others die. Suicides like the one which is about to take place here are sublime, but suicide is restricted, and does not allow of extension; and so soon as it affects your neighbors, suicide becomes murder.”

“Freedom in art, freedom in society, this is the double goal towards which all consistent and logical minds must strive.”

“where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and who can say which has the wider vision?”

“Table talk and Lovers' talk equally elude the grasp; Lovers' Talk is clouds, Table Talk is smoke."

Les Miserables”

“Large, heavy, ragged black clouds hung like crape hammocks beneath the starry cope of the night. You would have said that they were the cobwebs of the firmament.”

“where would the shout of love begin, if not from the summit of sacrifice?”

“The greatest products of architecture are less the works of individuals than of society; rather the offspring of a nation's effort, than the inspired flash of a man of genius…”

“True or false, that which is said of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all in their destinies, as that which they do.”

“A breath of Paris preserves the soul.”

“But alas, if I have not maintained my victory, it is God's fault for not making man and the devil of equal strength.”

“Sire, you are looking at a plain man, and I am looking at a great man. Each of us may benefit.”

“She worked in order to live, and presently fell in love, also in order to live, for the heart, too, has its hunger.”

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