Victor Hugo Quotes on Man (56 Quotes)

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.

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...

He believed that faith gives health. He sought to counsel and calm the despairing by pointing out the Man of Resignation, and to transform the grief that contemplates the grave by showing it the grief that looks up to the stars.

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.

In 1815, M. Charles-Francois-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D-- He was an old man of about seventy-five years of age; he had occupied the see of D-- since 1806.

In fact, he who has only beheld the misery of man has seen nothing; the misery of woman is what he must see; he who has seen only the misery of woman has seen nothing; he must see the misery of the child.

Love is the foolishness of men, and the wisdom of God.

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

Nothing discernible to the eye of the spirit is more brilliant or obscure than man; nothing is more formidable, complex, mysterious, and infinite. There is a prospect greater than the sea, and it is the sky; there is a prospect greater than the sky, and it is the human soul.

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

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

Success is a very hideous thing. Its false resemblance to merit deceives men.

And, moreover, when it happens that both are sincere and good, nothing will mix and amalgamate more easily than an old priest and an old soldier. In reality, they are the same kind of man. One has devoted himself to country upon earth, the other to his country in heaven; there is no other difference.

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.

Can human nature ever be wholly and radically transformed? Can the man whom God made good be made wicked by man? Can the soul be reshaped in its entirety by destiny and made evil because destiny is evil? Can the heart become misshapen and afflicted with ugly, incurable deformities under disproportionate misfortune, like a spinal column bent beneath a too low roof?

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

Every good quality runs into a defect; economy borders on avarice, the generous are not far from the prodigal, the brave man is close to the bully; he who is very pious is slightly sanctimonious; there are just as many vices to virtue as there are holes in the mantle of Diogenes.

The straight line, a respectable optical illusion which ruins many a man.

Faith is necessary to men; woe to him who believes in nothing!

There are things stronger than the strongest man...

Forget not, never forget that you have promised me to use this silver to become an honest man.... Jean Valjean, my brother: you belong no longer to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I am buying for you. I withdraw it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God!

Win a lottery-prize and you are a cleaver man. Winners are adulated. To be born with a caul is everything; luck is what matters. Be fortunate and you will be thought great.

From a political point of view, there is but one principle, the sovereignty of man over himself. This sovereignty of myself over myself is called Liberty

A one-eyed man is much more incomplete than a blind man, for he knows what it is that's lacking.

Religions do a useful thing: they narrow God to the limits of man. Philosophy replies by doing a necessary thing: it elevates man to the plane of God.

The animal is ignorant of the fact that he knows. The man is aware of the fact that he is ignorant.

There is no such thing as a little country. The greatness of a people is no more determined by their numbers than the greatness of a man is by his height.

The wise man does not grow old, but ripens.

The first symptom of love in a young man is shyness the first symptom in a woman, it's boldness.

Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.

Blessed be Providence which has given to each his toy: the doll to the child, the child to the woman, the woman to the man, the man to the devil!

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

Civil war? What does that mean? Is there any foreign war? Isn't every war fought between men, between brothers?

From the oyster to the eagle, from the swine to the tiger, all animals are to be found in men and each of them exists in some man, sometimes several at the time. Animals are nothing but the portrayal of our virtues and vices made manifest to our eyes, the visible reflections of our souls. God displays them to us to give us food for thought.

The man who does not know other languages, unless he is a man of genius, necessarily has deficiencies in his ideas.

A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.

Anger may be foolish and obsurd, and one may be irritated when in the wrong but a man never feels outraged unless in some respect he is at bottom right.

My friends, remember this, that there are no weeds, and no worthless men, there are only bad farmers.

Each man should frame life so that at some future hour fact and his dreaming meet.

Whenever we encounter the Infinite in man, however imperfectly understood, we treat it with respect. Whether in the synagogue, the mosque, the pagoda, or the wigwam, there is a hideous aspect which we execrate and a sublime aspect which we venerate. So great a subject for spiritual contemplation, such measureless dreaming -- the echo of God on the human wall

There have been in this century only one great man and one great thing: Napoleon and liberty. For want of the great man, let us have the great thing.

To reform a man you must begin with his grandmother.

Conscience is God present in man.

The first symptom of love in a young man is timidity; in a girl boldness.

Man holds an angel in his power.

Genius: the superhuman in man.

A faith is a necessity to a man. Woe to him who believes in nothing.

Men like me are impossible until the day when they become necessary.

Progress is the life-style of man. The general life of the human race is called Progress, and so is its collective march. Progress advances, it makes the great human and earthly journey towards what is heavenly and divine it has its pauses, when it rallies the stragglers, its stopping places when it meditates, contemplating some new and splendid promised land that has suddenly appeared on its horizon. It has its nights of slumber and it is one of the poignant anxieties of the thinker to see the human spirit lost in shadow, and to grope in the darkness without being able to awake sleeping progress.

Close by the Rights of Man, at the least set beside them, are the Rights of the Spirit.