Victor Hugo famous quotes

An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise.
-- Victor Hugo

#Stupid #Silly #Intelligent

To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do.
-- Victor Hugo

#Thanksgiving #Prayer #Wings

Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.
-- Victor Hugo

#Love #Optimistic #Recovery

To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.
-- Victor Hugo

#Book #Reading #Healing

In joined hands there is still some token of hope, in the clinched fist none.
-- Victor Hugo

#Hands #Fists #Stills

What a grand thing, to be loved! What a grander thing still, to love!
-- Victor Hugo

#Love #Wisdom #Stills

He who is not capable of enduring poverty is not capable of being free.
-- Victor Hugo

#Wisdom #Being Free #Poverty

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.
-- Victor Hugo

#Inspirational #Life #God

To love beauty is to see light.
-- Victor Hugo

#Beauty #Spiritual #Light

Initiative is doing the right thing without being told.
-- Victor Hugo

#Life #Wisdom #Follow Your Heart

He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two.
-- Victor Hugo

#Book #Two #Arms

Be like the bird who, pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing she hath wings.
-- Victor Hugo

#Faith #Confidence #Health

Virtue has a veil, vice a mask.
-- Victor Hugo

#Wisdom #Vices #Veils

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.
-- Victor Hugo

#Love #Life #Family

To love another person is to see the face of God.
-- Victor Hugo

#Love #Happy Valentines Day #Faces

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
-- Victor Hugo

#Love #Life #Happiness

Love is a portion of the soul itself, and it is of the same nature as the celestial breathing of the atmosphere of paradise.
-- Victor Hugo

#Love #Life #Breathing

Perseverance, secret of all triumphs.
-- Victor Hugo

#Life #Perseverance #Determination

Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.
-- Victor Hugo

#God #Wisdom #Attitude

Short as life is, we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time.
-- Victor Hugo

#Life #Leadership #Waste

Prayer is an august avowal of ignorance.
-- Victor Hugo

#Prayer #Ignorance #August

Revolutions spring not from accident, but from necessity. A revolution is a return from the factitious to the real. It takes place because it must.
-- Victor Hugo

#Spring #Real #Return

There are no weeds, and no worthless men. There are only bad farmers.
-- Victor Hugo

#Weed #Men #Farmers

M. Mabeuf’s political opinion was a passionate fondness for plants, and a still greater one for books. He had, like everybody else, his termination in ist, without which nobody could have lived in those times, but he was neither a royalist, nor a Bonapartist, nor a chartist, nor an Orleanist, nor an anarchist; he was an old-bookist.
-- Victor Hugo

#Book #Political #Passionate

Stupidity talks, vanity acts.
-- Victor Hugo

#Vanity #Stupidity

It is by suffering that human beings become angels.
-- Victor Hugo

#Angel #Suffering #Awareness

As the purse is emptied, the heart is filled.
-- Victor Hugo

#Inspiring #Heart #Purses

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

#Men #Pistols #Triggers

A language does not become fixed. The human intellect is always on the march, or, if you prefer, in movement, and languages with it.
-- Victor Hugo

#Movement #Doe #March

Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause.
-- Victor Hugo

#Strong #Intellectual #Bitterness

I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes, - and the stars through his soul.
-- Victor Hugo

#Love #Stars #Men

Curiosity is one of the forms of feminine bravery.
-- Victor Hugo

#Women #Bravery #Curiosity

The wicked envy and hate; it is their way of admiring.
-- Victor Hugo

#Hate #Envy #Wicked

Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant.
-- Victor Hugo

#Wisdom #Memories #Imagination

Nothing is more true, more real, than the primeval magnetic disturbances that two souls may communicate to one another, through the tiny sparks of a moment's glance.
-- Victor Hugo

#Real #Two #Soul

A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.
-- Victor Hugo

#Inspirational #Kissing #Veils

Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age.
-- Victor Hugo

#Health #Medicine #50th Birthday

Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.
-- Victor Hugo

#Inspirational #Life #Change

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

#Faith #Wisdom #Believe

Life is the flower for which love is the honey.
-- Victor Hugo

#Love #Life #Boyfriend

When a woman is talking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes.
-- Victor Hugo

#Love #Relationship #Wisdom

Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization.
-- Victor Hugo

#Smile #Jesus #Civilization

Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings.
-- Victor Hugo

#Animal #Wings #Knowing

Fashions have done more harm than revolutions.
-- Victor Hugo

#Funny #Wisdom #Fashion

Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.
-- Victor Hugo

#Wisdom #Adversity #Men

There are fathers who do not love their children; there is no grandfather who does not adore his grandson.
-- Victor Hugo

#Love #Children #Father

Sorrow is a fruit. God does not make it grow on limbs too weak to bear it.
-- Victor Hugo

#Sorrow #Fruit #Bears

Son, brother, father, lover, friend. There is room in the heart for all the affections, as there is room in heaven for all the stars.
-- Victor Hugo

#Love #Brother #Stars

Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.
-- Victor Hugo

#Music #Wisdom #Silence

To learn to read is to light a fire.
-- Victor Hugo

#Fire #Light

All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.
-- Victor Hugo

#Strength #Time #Powerful

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
-- Victor Hugo

#Education #Teacher #Appreciation

When love has fused and mingled two beings in a sacred and angelic unity, the secret of life has been discovered so far as they are concerned; they are no longer anything more than the two boundaries of the same destiny; they are no longer anything but the two wings of the same spirit. Love, soar.
-- Victor Hugo

#Destiny #Wings #Two

Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.
-- Victor Hugo

#Inspirational #Funny #Life

When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right.
-- Victor Hugo

#Wisdom #Political #Politics

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

#Past #Echoes #Reflexes

Tobacco is the plant that converts thoughts into dreams.
-- Victor Hugo

#Dream #Plant #Tobacco

There comes an hour when protest no longer suffices; after philosophy there must be action; the strong hand finishes what the idea has sketched.
-- Victor Hugo

#Strong #Philosophy #Hands

You who suffer because you love, love still more. To die of love, is to live by it.
-- Victor Hugo

#Love Is #Suffering #Live By

There shall be no slavery of the mind.
-- Victor Hugo

#Mind #Slavery

To put everything in balance is good, to put everything in harmony is better.
-- Victor Hugo

#Balance #Harmony

There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.
-- Victor Hugo

#Class #Humanity #Poverty

A smile is the same as sunshine; it banishes winter from the human countenance.
-- Victor Hugo

#Winter #Sunshine #Humans

The owl goes not into the nest of the lark.
-- Victor Hugo

#Owl #Nests #Larks

Morality is truth in full bloom.
-- Victor Hugo

#Morality

Superstitions, bigotries, hypocrisies, prejudices, these phantoms, phantoms though they be, cling to life; they have teeth and nails in their shadowy substance, and we must grapple with them individually and make war on them without truce; for it is one of humanity's inevitabilities to be condemned to eternal struggle with phantoms.
-- Victor Hugo

#War #Struggle #Hypocrisy

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

#Two #Lines #Saws

If people did not love one another, I really don't see what use there would be in having any spring.
-- Victor Hugo

#Spring #People #Would Be

He who despairs is wrong.
-- Victor Hugo

#Despair

Revolution is the larva of civilization.
-- Victor Hugo

#Civilization #Revolution

Love is the foolishness of men, and the wisdom of God.
-- Victor Hugo

#Love Is #Men #Foolishness

Caution is the eldest child of wisdom
-- Victor Hugo

#Children #Caution #Eldest

Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.
-- Victor Hugo

#Night #Soul #Darkness

Let us sacrifice one day to gain perhaps a whole life.
-- Victor Hugo

#Sacrifice #One Day #Gains

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.
-- Victor Hugo

#Reflection #Inspire #Delight

Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing.
-- Victor Hugo

#Science #Lasts #Firsts

Mothers arms are made of tenderness, And sweet sleep blesses the child who lies therein.
-- Victor Hugo

#Mother #Sweet #Children

The future has many names: For the weak, it means the unattainable. For the fearful, it means the unknown. For the courageous, it means opportunity.
-- Victor Hugo

#Mean #Opportunity #Names

My coat and I live comfortably togther. It has assumed all my wrinkles, does not hurt me anywhere, has moulded itself on my deformities, and is complacent to all my movements, and I only feel its presence because it keeps me warm. Old coats and old friends are the same thing.
-- Victor Hugo

#Hurt #Wrinkles #Old Friends

If you wish to understand what Revolution is, call it Progress; and if you wish to understand what Progress is, call it Tomorrow.
-- Victor Hugo

#Wish #Progress #Revolution

Promise to give me a kiss on my brow when I am dead. --I shall feel it." She dropped her head again on Marius' knees, and her eyelids closed. He thought the poor soul had departed. Eponine remained motionless. All at once, at the very moment when Marius fancied her asleep forever, she slowly opened her eyes in which appeared the sombre profundity of death, and said to him in a tone whose sweetness seemed already to proceed from another world:-- "And by the way, Monsieur Marius, I believe that I was a little bit in love with you.
-- Victor Hugo

#Goodbye #Believe #Love You

Great buildings, like great mountains, are the work of centuries.
-- Victor Hugo

#Mountain #Building #Century

One can no more keep the mind from returning to an idea than the sea from returning to a shore. For a sailor, this is called the tide; in the case of the guilty it is called remorse. God stirs up the soul as well as the ocean.
-- Victor Hugo

#Wisdom #Ocean #Sea

There is something more terrible than a hell of suffering--a hell of boredom.
-- Victor Hugo

#Boredom #Suffering #Hell

If suffer we must, let's suffer on the heights.
-- Victor Hugo

#Suffering #Height

...Human thought has no limit. At its risk and peril, it analyzes and dissects its own fascination. We could almost say that, by a sort of splendid reaction, it fascinates nature; the mysterious world surrounding us returns what it receives; it is likely that contemplators are contemplated.
-- Victor Hugo

#Risk #World #Limits

Not being heard is no reason for silence.
-- Victor Hugo

#Inspiring #Silence #Reason

One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas.
-- Victor Hugo

#Wisdom #Army #Ideas

To die for lack of love is horrible. The asphyxia of the soul.
-- Victor Hugo

#Love #Soul #Horrible

Superstition, bigotry and prejudice, ghosts though they are, cling tenaciously to life; they are shades armed with tooth and claw. They must be grappled with unceasingly, for it is a fateful part of human destiny that it is condemned to wage perpetual war against ghosts. A shade is not easily taken by the throat and destroyed.
-- Victor Hugo

#War #Taken #Destiny

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.
-- Victor Hugo

#Eye #Men #Sea

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.
-- Victor Hugo

#Men #Destiny #Important

Reason is intelligence taking exercise. Imagination is intelligence with an erection.
-- Victor Hugo

#Inspirational #Exercise #Imagination

It was SHE. Whoever has loved knows all the radiant meaning contained in the three letters of this word ‘she.
-- Victor Hugo

#Three #Letters

...Nobody knows like a woman how to say things that are both sweet and profound. Sweetness and depth, this is all of woman; this is Heaven.
-- Victor Hugo

#Sweet #Profound #Heaven

A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in--what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.
-- Victor Hugo

#Dream #Stars #Flower

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.
-- Victor Hugo

#Night #Clouds #Black

Those who live are those who fight.
-- Victor Hugo

#Fighting

The future has several names. For the weak, it is impossible; for the fainthearted, it is unknown; but for the valiant, it is ideal.
-- Victor Hugo

#Positive #Names #Impossible

The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.
-- Victor Hugo

#Depression #Light #Soul