Victor Hugo: Quotes about life

Victor Hugo was French poet, novelist, and dramatist. Explore interesting quotes on life.
Victor Hugo: 616   quotes 51   likes

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

Victor Hugo book Things Seen

Often attributed to Churchill, this thought was originally expressed by the French author Victor Hugo in Villemain (1845), as follows: You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around everything that shines. Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats. Do not bother yourself about it; disdain. Keep your mind serene as you keep your life clear.
Villemain is a brief segment taken from Hugo’s Choses Vues (Things Seen), a running journal Hugo kept of events he witnessed. The original French versions of these journals were published after Hugo's death.
Misattributed

Leadership , Cute , Funny , Life

“The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves—say rather, loved in spite of ourselves.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Variant: The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
Source: Les Misérables

Love , Life , Wise , Happiness

“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.”

Victor Hugo
Courageous , Life , God , Peace

“To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Variant: To love or have loved is all-sufficing. We must not ask for more. No other pearl is to be found in the shadowfolds of life. To love is an accomplishment.
Source: Les Misérables

love , Heart Touching , Romantic , Wedding

“Cimourdain knew everything and nothing. He knew everything about science, and nothing at all about life. Hence his inflexibility.”

Victor Hugo

Part 2, Book 1, Ch. 2
Ninety-Three (1874)
Context: Cimourdain was one of those men who have a voice within them, and who listen to it. Such men seem absent-minded; they are not; they are all attention.
Cimourdain knew everything and nothing. He knew everything about science, and nothing at all about life. Hence his inflexibility. His eyes were bandaged like Homer's Themis. He had the blind certainty of the arrow, which sees only the mark and flies to it. In a revolution, nothing is more terrible than a straight line. Cimourdain went straight ahead, as sure as fate.
Cimourdain believed that, in social geneses, the extreme point is the solid earth; an error peculiar to minds which replace reason with logic.

Life , Science

“In proportion as I advance in life, I grow more simple, and I become more and more patriotic for humanity.”

Victor Hugo

Letter To M. Daelli on Les Misérables (1862)
Context: This book, Les Misérables, is no less your mirror than ours. Certain men, certain castes, rise in revolt against this book, — I understand that. Mirrors, those revealers of the truth, are hated; that does not prevent them from being of use. As for myself, I have written for all, with a profound love for my own country, but without being engrossed by France more than by any other nation. In proportion as I advance in life, I grow more simple, and I become more and more patriotic for humanity.

Life

“Before him he saw two roads, both equally straight; but he did see two; and that terrified him--he who had never in his life known anything but one straight line. And, bitter anguish, these two roads were contradictory.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Life

“I'd like a drink. I desire to forget life. Life is a hideous invention by somebody I don't know. It doesn't last, and it's good for nothing. You break your neck simply living.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Life , Drink , Forgetting

“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

Life , Thinking , Falseness , Forgetting

“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

Life , Youth , Sadness , Feeling

“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.”

Victor Hugo
Life , Business

“… 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.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Life , God

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

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Variant: Life's great happiness is to be convinced we are loved.
Source: Les Misérables

love , Romantic , Love , Life