Victor Hugo Quotes

452 Sourced Quotes

We say and exclaim within ourselves without breaking silence, in a tumult where everything speaks except our mouths. The realities of the soul are none the less real for being invisible and impalpable.

Victor Hugo
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
The convent is supreme egotism resulting in supreme self-denial.

Victor Hugo
At the hour of civilization through which we are now passing, and which is still so sombre, the miserable's name is Man; he is agonizing in all climes, and he is groaning in all languages.

Victor Hugo
Success is an ugly thing. Men are deceived by its false resemblances to merit.... They confound the brilliance of the firmament with the star-shaped footprints of a duck in the mud.

Victor Hugo
M. Myriel had to undergo the fate of every newcomer in a little town, where there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think.

Victor Hugo
To be a saint is the exception; to be a just person is the rule. Err, stumble, commit sin, but be one of the just.

Victor Hugo
To lie a little is not possible: he who lies, lies the whole lie.

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

Victor Hugo
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
Nature is pitiless; she never withdraws her flowers, her music, her fragrance, and her sunlight from before human cruelty or suffering.

Victor Hugo
You insist on the example [of the death penalty]. Why? For what it teaches. What do you want to teach with your example? That thou shalt not kill. And how do you teach thou shalt not kill? By killing.

Victor Hugo
Upon the first goblet he read this inscription, monkey wine; upon the second, lion wine; upon the third, sheep wine; upon the fourth, swine wine. These four inscriptions expressed the four descending degrees of drunkenness: the first, that which enlivens; the second, that which irritates; the third, that which stupefies; finally the last, that which brutalizes.

Victor Hugo
Hope! hope, you miserable! There is no infinite mourning, no incurable evils, no eternal hell!

Victor Hugo
Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers.

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

Victor Hugo
"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.

Victor Hugo
She might have melted a heart of stone, but nothing can melt a heart of wood.

Victor Hugo
The realities of life do not allow themselves to be forgotten.

Victor Hugo
Let us suffer if we must, but let us suffer on the heights.

Victor Hugo
God created the coquette as soon as he had made the fool.

Victor Hugo
Nothing is more dangerous than discontinued labor; it is habit lost. A habit easy to abandon, difficult to resume.

Victor Hugo
My misfortune is that I still resemble a man too much. I should liked to be wholly a beast like that goat. - Quasimodo

Victor Hugo
Joy is my character, 'Tis the fault of Voltaire; Misery is my trousseau 'Tis the fault of Rousseau.
Gavroche speaking

Victor Hugo
This is the battle between day and night... I see black light.

Victor Hugo
Glory, ambition, armies, fleets, thrones, crowns: playthings of grown children.

Victor Hugo
I didn't believe it could be so monstrous. It's wrong to be so absorbed in divine law as not to perceive human law. Death belongs to God alone. By what right do men tough that unknown thing?

Victor Hugo
To be wicked does not insure prosperity, for the inn did not succeed well.

Victor Hugo
It is man's consolation that the future is to be a sunrise instead of a sunset.

Victor Hugo
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