Victor Hugo Quotes on History (5 Quotes)

What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past.

Despots play their part in the works of thinkers. Fettered words are terrible words. The writer doubles and trebles the power of his writing when a ruler imposes silence on the people. Something emerges from that enforced silence, a mysterious fullness which filters through and becomes steely in the thought. Repression in history leads to conciseness in the historian, and the rocklike hardness of much celebrated prose is due to the tempering of the tyrant.

History has its truth and so has legend hers.

The nearer I approach the end, the clearer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. It is marvelous yet simple. For half a century I have been writing my thoughts in prose, verse, history, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode and song I have tried all but I feel that I have not said a thousandth part of that which is in me. When I go down to the grave I can say like many others, 'I have finished my day's work' but I cannot say, 'I have finished my life's work' my day's work will begin the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley. It is an open thoroughfare. It closes in the twilight to open in the dawn. My work is only beginning my work is hardly above its foundation. I would gladly see it mounting forever. The thirst for the infinite proves infinity.

Well, for us, in history where goodness is a rare pearl, he who was good almost takes precedence over he who was great.