Victor Hugo Quotes (468 Quotes)

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.

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.

Without knowing it, Javert in his awful happiness was deserving of pity, like every ignorant man who triumphs. Nothing could have been more poignant or more heartrending than that countenance on which was inscribed all the evil in what is good.

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...

A man without a woman is like a pistol without a trigger; it is the woman who makes the man go off.

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

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.

Her soul trembled on her lips like a drop of dew on a flower.

It seemed as though he had for a soul the book of the natural law.

M. Myriel had to undergo the fate of every newcomer in a little town, where there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think.

People do not read stupidities with impunity.

Success is an ugly thing. Men are deceived by its false resemblances to merit.... They confound the brilliance of the firmament with the star-shaped footprints of a duck in the mud.

The peculiarity of sunrise is to make us laugh at all our terrors of the night, and our laugh is always proportioned to the fear we have had.

There is a way of avoiding which resembles seeking.

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.

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.

There are plenty who regard a wall behind which something is happening as a very curious thing.

A room where one merely goes to bed costs twenty sous but a room where one retires may cost twenty francs.

Citizens, in the future there will be neither darkness nor thunderbolts; neither ferocious ignorance, nor bloody retaliation. As there will be no more Satan, there will be no more Michael. In the future no one will kill any one else, the earth will beam with radiance, the human race will love. The day will come, citizens, when all will be concord, harmony, light, joy and life; it will come, and it is in order that it may come that we are about to die.

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

Here we stop. On the threshold of wedding nights stands an angel smiling, a finger to his lips.

It was all over with him. Marius loved a woman. His destiny was entering upon the unknown.

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

Profound hearts, wise minds, take life as God makes it; it is a long trial, and unintelligible preparation for the unknown destiny.

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.

The poor man shuddered, overflowed with an angelic joy; he declared in his transport that this would last through life; he said to himself that he really had not suffered enough to deserve such radiant happiness, and he thanked God, in the depths of his soul, for having permitted that he, a miserable man, should be so loved by this innocent being

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

We are never done with conscience. Choose your course by it, Brutus; Choose your course by it, Cato. It is bottomless, being God. We cast in to this pit the labor of our whole lives, we cast in our liberty or our country, we cast in our well-being, we cast in our repose, we cast in our happiness. More! more! more! Empty the vase! turn out the urn! We must at last cast in our heart.

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

When a man understands the art of seeing, he can trace the spirit of an age and the features of a king even in the knocker on a door.

A torch-flame resembles the wisdom of cowards: it gives a poor light because it trembles.

Common right is nought but the protection of all radiating over the right of each. This protection of all is termed Fraternity. The point of intersection of all these aggregated sovereignties is called Society. This intersection being a junction, this point is a knot. Hence comes what is called the social tie.

God knows better than we do what we need.

His tavern sign bore witness to his feats of arms. He had painted it himself, being a Jack-of-all-trades who did everything badly.

It's not enough to abolish abuse; custom must also be transformed. The mill was pulled down, but the wind still blows.

Marius and Cosette did not ask where this would lead them. They looked at themselves as arrived. It is a strange pretension for men to ask that love should lead them somewhere.

Progress is not accomplished in one stage.

That is the explanation of war, an outrage by humanity upon humanity in despite of humanity.

The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only.

There is will in the thought, there is none in the dream. The dream, which is completely spontaneous, takes and keeps, even in the gigantic and the ideal, the form of our mind. Nothing springs more directly and more sincerely from the very bottom of our souls than our unreflected and indefinite aspirations towards the splendours of destiny.

We may remain more or less open-minded on the subject of the death penalty, indisposed to commit ourselves, so long as we have not seen a guillotine with our own eyes.

You who are Prejudice, Abuse, Ignominy, Oppression, Iniquity, Despotism, Injustice, Fanaticism, beware of the wide-eyed urchin. He will grow up.

When you get an idea into your head you find it in everything.

Adorable ambuscades of providence!

Daring is the price of progress. All splendid conquests are the prize of boldness, more or less.

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.

His universal compassion was due less to natural instinct, than to a profound conviction, a sum of thoughts that in the course of living had filtered through to his heart: for in the nature of man, as in rock, there may be channels hollowed by the dropping of water, and these can never be destroyed.

It's that big guy who's the government.

Marius and Cosette were in the dark in regard to each other. They did not speak, they did not bow, they were not acquainted; they saw each other; and, like the stars in the sky separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing upon each other.

Protect the workers, encourage the rich.