Victor Hugo Quotes

To love beauty is to see light.

An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise.

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

Go out in the world and work like money doesn't matter, sing as if no one is listening, love as if you have never been hurt, and dance as if no one is watching.

When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right.

Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.

Music expresses that which cannot be put into words.

There is nothing like a dream to create the future.

She was a lovely blonde, with fine teeth. She had gold and pearls for her dowry; but her gold was on her head, and her pearls were in her mouth.

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

All roads are blocked to a philosophy which reduces everything to the word "no." To "no" there is only one answer and that is "yes." Nihilism has no substance. There is no such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing. Man lives more by affirmation than by bread.

Life is the flower for which love is the honey.

A mother's arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them.

Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices are the real murderers. The great dangers lie within ourselves.

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

Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart; I breathe at this hour the fragrance of the lilacs, the violets, and the roses, as at twenty years ago.

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.

The man who fights against his own country is never a hero.

There is one spectacle grander than the sea, That is the sky.

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.

Everything being a constant carnival, there is no carnival left.

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.

Reason is intelligence taking exercise. Imagination is intelligence with an erection.

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

The last resort of kings, the cannonball. The last resort of the people, the paving stone.

When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age.

The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real that we exist; it is by the ideal that we live.

A bit of mould is a pleiad of flowers; a nebula is an ant-hill of stars.

We say that slavery has vanished from European civilization, but this is not true. Slavery still exists, but now it applies only to women and its name is prostitution.

Nihilism has no substance. There is no such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing.

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

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.

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

Perseverance, secret of all triumphs.

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

It is from books that wise men derive consolation in the troubles of life.

England has two books, the Bible and Shakespeare. England made Shakespeare,but the Bible made England.

The book which the reader now holds in his hands, from one end to the other, as a whole and in its details, whatever gaps, exceptions, or weaknesses it may contain, treats of the advance from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from falsity to truth, from darkness to daylight, from blind appetite to conscience, from decay to life, from bestiality to duty, from Hell to Heaven, from limbo to God. Matter itself is the starting-point, and the point of arrival is the soul. Hydra at the beginning, an angel at the end.

Justice has its anger, my lord Bishop, and the wrath of justice is an element of progress. Whatever else may be said of it, the French Revolution was the greatest step forward by mankind since the coming of Christ. It was unfinished, I agree, but still it was sublime. It released the untapped springs of society; it softened hearts, appeased, tranquilized, enlightened, and set flowing through the world the tides of civilization. It was good. The French Revolution was the anointing of humanity.

Nations, like stars, are entitled to eclipse. All is well, provided the light returns and the eclipse does not become endless night. Dawn and resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul.

He who is not capable of enduring poverty is not capable of being free.

Love is like a tree, it grows of its own accord, it puts down deep roots into our whole being.

Initiative is doing the right thing without being told.

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.

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

Nothing can be more depressing than to expose, naked to the light of thought, the hideous growth of argot. Indeed it is like a sort of repellent animal intended to dwell in darkness which has been dragged out of its cloaca. One seems to see a horned and living creature viciously struggling to be restored to the place where it belongs. One word is like a claw, another like a sightless and bleeding eye; and there are phrases which clutch like the pincers of a crab. And all of it is alive with the hideous vitality of things that have organized themselves amid disorganization.

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

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

Man's greatest actions are performed in minor struggles. Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment and poverty are battlefields which have their heroes - obscure heroes who are at times greater than illustrious heroes.

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