Victor Hugo Quotes

Often when we think we are knotting one thread, we are tying quite another.

As for the bishop, the sight of the guillotine was a great shock to him, from which he recovered only slowly.

France is great because she is France.

The peculiarity of sunrise is to make us laugh at all our terrors of the night, and our laugh is always proportioned to the fear we have had.

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

His judgement demonstrates that one can be a genius and understand nothing of an art that is not one's own.

People do not read stupidities with impunity.

He left her. She was dissatisfied with him. He had preferred to incur her anger rather than cause her pain. He had kept all the pain for himself.

Though one believes in nothing, there are moments in life when one accepts the religion of the temple nearest at hand.

The sadness which reigned everywhere was but an excuse for unfailing kindness.

To commit the least possible sin is the law for man. To live without sin is the dream of an angel. Everything terrestrial is subject to sin. Sin is a gravitation.

Genuflection before the idol or the dollar destroys the muscles which walk and the will that moves.

Whatever causes night in our souls may leave stars. Cimourdain was full of virtues and truth, but they shine out of a dark background.

The earth is a great piece of stupidity.

Winter changes into stone the water of heaven and the heart of man.

Those who always pray are necessary to those who never pray.

To breathe Paris is to preserve one's soul.

To live a life which is a perpetual falsehood is to suffer unknown tortures.

It is those books which a man possesses but does not read which constitute the most suspicious evidence against him.

Philosophy is the microscope of thought. Everything desires to flee from it, but nothing escapes it.

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

Work, which makes a man free, and thought, which makes him worthy of freedom.

Dry happiness is like dry bread. We eat, but we do not dine. I wish for the superfluous, for the useless, for the extravagant, for the too much, for that which is not good for anything.

Youth, even in its sorrows, always has a brilliancy of its own.

So long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Miserables cannot fail to be of use.

Dying is nothing. What's terrible is not to live.

But when ill indeed, Even dismissing the doctor don't always succeed.

Have but luck, and you will have the rest; be fortunate, and you will be thought great.

The word is the Verb, and the Verb is God.

The most terrible of motives and the most unanswerable of responses: Because.

The heart becomes heroic through passion. It is no longer composed of anything but what is pure; it no longer rests upon anything but what is elevated and great.

The hand which moves over the dial moves also among souls.

If I have not been exposed and am not in any danger of pursuit. But I have been exposed, I am pursued - by myself! That is a pursuer that does not readily let go.

It is ourselves we have to fear. Prejudice is the real robber, and vice the real murderer.

Emotion is always new and the word has always served; therein lies the difficulty of expressing emotion.

A man trying to escape never thinks himself sufficiently concealed.

Youth is the future smiling at a stranger, which is itself.

God became man, granted. The devil became a woman.

These are true felicities. No joy beyond these joys. Love is the only ecstasy, everything else weeps

The beautiful has but one type, the ugly has a thousand.

He who is not master of his own thoughts is not accountable for his own deeds.

Daring is the price of progress. All splendid conquests are the prize of boldness, more or less.

It may be remarked in passing that success is an ugly thing. Men are deceived by its false resemblences to merit.

Solitude either develops the mental power, or renders men dull and vicious.

To pay compliments to the one we love is the first method of caressing, a demi-audacity venturing. A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.

To have lied is to have suffered.

He had not yet lived long enough to have discovered that nothing is more close at hand then the impossible, and that what must be looked for is always the unforeseen.

Her soul trembled on her lips like a drop of dew on a flower.

Love resembles a tree: it bends under its own weight, deeply rooted in our being and sometimes turns green in the ruins of a heart.

In every cradle decked with rosy wreath Lurk germs of death.