Victor Hugo Quotes

It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.

No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.

Phenomena intersect; to see but one is to see nothing.

A saint addicted to excessive self-abnegation is a dangerous associate; he may infect you with poverty, and a stiffening of those joints which are needed for advancement-in a word, with more renunciation than you care for-and so you flee the contagion.

The beautiful is as useful as the useful." He added after a moment’s silence, "Perhaps more so.

We should judge a man much more surely from what he dreams than from what he thinks.

God made the water but men made the wine.

‎"Dost thou understand? I love thee!" he cried again."What love!" said the unhappy girl with a shudder.He resumed,--"The love of a damned soul.

The drama is complete poetry. The ode and the epic contain it only in germ; it contains both of them in a state of high development, and epitomizes both.

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

The first proof of charity in a priest, and especially a bishop, is poverty.

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.

Indigestion is charged by God with enforcing morality on the stomach.

A library implies an act of faith.

To study in Paris is to be born in Paris!

The world is the expanding Greece and Greece is the shrinking world.

Without at all invalidating what we have just said, we believe that a perpetual remembrance of the tomb is proper for the living. On this point, the priest and the philosopher agree: We must die.

Idleness is a mother. She has a son, robbery, and a daughter, hunger.

Hell is an outrage on humanity. When you tell me that your deity made you in his image, I reply that he must have been very ugly.

He had slipped, climbed, rolled, searched, walked, persevered, that is all. Such is the secret of all triumphs.

Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause.

We are for religion against the religions.

In the opera we call love, the libretto is almost nothing.

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

Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart. The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. . . . For half a century I have been writing thoughts in prose, verse, history, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode, and song. I have tried them all, but I feel I have not said a thousandth part of that which is within me. When I go down to the grave, I can say "I have finished my day's work," but I cannot say "I have finished my life's work."

To meditate is to labour; to think is to act. Folded arms work, closed hands perform, a gaze fixed on heaven is a toil.

An increase of tenderness always ended by boiling over and turning to indignation. He was at the point where we seek to adopt a course, and to accept what tears us apart.

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

The fact is that the beautiful, humanly speaking, is merely form considered in its simplest aspect, in its most perfect symmetry, in its most entire harmony with our make-up. Thus the ensemble that it offers us is always complete, but restricted like ourselves. What we call the ugly, on the contrary, is a detail of a great whole which eludes us, and which is in harmony, not with man but with all creation. That is why it constantly presents itself to us in new but incomplete aspects.

Nothing is more imminent than the impossible . . . what we must always foresee is the unforeseen.

Monsieur' to a convict is a glass of water to a man dying of thirst at sea; ignominy thirsts for respect.

I wanted to see you again, touch you, know who you were, see if I would find you identical with the ideal image of you which had remained with me and perhaps shatter my dream with the aid of reality. -Claude Frollo

For true poetry, complete poetry, consists in the harmony of contraries. Hence, it is time to say aloud--and it is here above allthat exceptions prove the rule--that everything that exists in nature exists in art.

There are no trifles in the human story, no trifling leaves on the tree.

The sunshine was delightful, the foliage gently astir, more from the activity of birds than from the breeze. One gallant little bird, doubtless lovelorn, was singing his heart out at the top of a tall tree.

The clouds, - the only birds that never sleep.

The real, native South Seas food is lousy. You can't eat it.

There is a spectacle more grand than the sea; it is heaven; there is a spectacle more grand than heaven; it is the conscience.

When grace combines with wrinkles, it is admirable. There is an indescribable light of dawn about intensely happy old age. . . . The young person is handsome, but the old, superb.

Progress is the stride of God.

What is fright by night is curiosity by day.

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

"I should hope so," Laigle replied, "for my coat and I live comfortably together. 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 1 only feel its presence because it keeps me warm."

Wisdom is a sacred communion.

Puns are the droppings of soaring wits.

I believe in religion against the religious; in the pitifulness of orisons, and in the sublimity of prayer.

Knowledge is a weight added to conscience.

There is suffering in the light; in excess it burns. Flame is hostile to the wing. To burn and yet to fly, this is the miracle of genius.