Victor Hugo Quotes

Thought is the toil of the intelligence, revery its voluptuousness. To replace thought with revery is to confound a poison with a food.

The shadow of the passions of the moment transversed this grand and gentle spirit occupied with eternal things.

France bleeds, but liberty smiles, and before the smile of liberty, France forgets her wound.

Intellectual and moral growth is no less indispensable than material amelioration...If three is anything more poignant than a body agonizing for want of bread, it is a soul dying of hunger for light.

It is wrong to become absorbed in the divine law to such a degree as not to perceive human law. Death belongs to God alone. By what right do men touch that unknown thing?

Something more terrible than a hell where one suffers may be imagined, and that is a hell where one is bored.

He was fond of saying, "There is a bravery of the priest as well as the bravery of a colonel of dragoons, --only, " he added, "ours must be tranquil.

One day of happiness is worth more than a lifetime of sorrow .... Under ordinary circumstances, jealousy is a suspicion to the person who excites it and degrading to the person who indulges it.

What greater flood can there be than the flood of ideas? How quickly they submerge all that they set out to destroy, how rapidly do they create terrifying depths?

At the approach of a certain dark hour, the light of Heaven fills those who are quitting the light of Earth.

Revolution is the accession of the peoples, and, at the bottom, the People is Man.

Enjolras caught glimpses of a luminous uprising under the dark skirts of the future.

Another said, "I don't ask six months, I don't ask two. In less than two weeks we'll meet the government face to face. With twenty-five thousand men we can make our stand.

In Burgundy and in the cities of the South the tree of Liberty was planted. That is to say, a pole topped by the revolutionary red bonnet.

There were corpses here and there and pools of blood. I remember seeing a butterfly flutter up and down that street. Summer does not abdicate.

a mother who loses her child can no longer believe in God

It is one of the poignant anxieties of the thinker that he sees the shadow resting on the human soul, and that he gropes in darkness without being able to awaken that slumbering Progress.

It is one of the poignant anxieties of the thinker that he sees the shadow resting on the human soul, and that he gropes in darkness without being able to awake that slumbering Progress.

Night sometimes lends such tragic assistance to catastrophe.

Every bird that flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw.

People who are overwhelmed with troubles never do look back.They know only too well that misfortune follows in their wake.

God will reward you, ' he said. 'You must be an angel since you care for flowers.

The night was starless and very dark. Without doubt, in the gloom some mighty angel was standing, with outstretched wings, awaiting the soul.

Hatred becomes, within a given time, the hatred of society, then the hatred of the human race, then the hatred of creation.

The head which does not turn backwards towards horizons that have vanished contains neither thought nor love.

She had had sweet dreams, which possibly arose from teh fact that her little bed was very white.

The prosperity of right is that it is always beautiful and pure.

Right is just and true.

What a great thing, to be loved! What a greater thing still, to love! The heart becomes heroic though passion…if no one loved, the sun would go out.

If no one loved, the sun would go out.

The devotion of one man had given strength and courage to all.

He loved books, those undemanding but faithful friends.

Do not inquire he name if him who asks a shelter of you. The very man who's embarrassed by his name is the one who needs shelter

The terrible shock of his sentence had in some way broken that wall which separates us from the mystery of things beyond and which we call life.

I have a dream my life would be. So different from this hell I'm living. So different now from what it seem. Now life has killed the dream I dreamed."*Fantine

Ever since history has been written, ever since philosophy has meditated, misery has been the garment of the human race.

Monsieur, innocence is its own crown. Innocence has no truck with highness. It is as august in rags as it is draped in the fleur-de-lis.

Monsieur, innocence is its own crown! Innocence has only to act to be noble! She is as august in rags as fleur de lys.

... plunged into chance, --that is to say, swallowed up in Providence

The boughs, without becoming detached from the trunk grow away from it.

He who every morning plans the transactions of that day and follows that plan carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life.

Be like the bird that passing on her flight awhile on boughs too slight feels them give way beneath her and yet sings knowing that she hath wings.

Forty is the old age of youth fifty is the youth of old age.

As the purse is emptied the heart is filled.

If you would civilize a man begin with his grandmother.

Common sense is in spite of not the result of education.

Sorrow is a fruit. God does not allow it to grow on a branch that is too weak to bear it.

I had rather be hissed for a good verse than applauded for a bad one.

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

Genius is a promontory jutting out of the infinite.