Victor Hugo Quotes

452 Sourced Quotes

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

Victor Hugo

What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past.

Victor Hugo

Every good quality runs into a defect; economy borders on avarice, the generous are not far from the prodigal, the brave man is close to the bully; he who is very pious is slightly sanctimonious; there are just as many vices to virtue as there are holes in the mantle of Diogenes.

Victor Hugo

Not seeing people allows you to think of them as perfect in all kinds of ways.

Victor Hugo

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

Victor Hugo

The three great problems of this century; the degradation of man in the proletariat, the subjection of women through hunger, the atrophy of the child by darkness.

Victor Hugo

Alas! to have risen does not prevent falling. We see this in history oftener than we would wish.

Victor Hugo

The ode lives upon the ideal, the epic upon the grandiose, the drama upon the real.

Victor Hugo

The soul does not give itself up to despair until it has exhausted all illusions.

Victor Hugo

Waterloo is a battle of the first rank won by a captain of the second.

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

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

Victor Hugo

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

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

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

Victor Hugo

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

Victor Hugo

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

Gavroche speaking

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

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

Victor Hugo

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

Victor Hugo

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

Victor Hugo

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

Victor Hugo

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

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

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

Victor Hugo

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

Victor Hugo

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

Victor Hugo

Sacrificing the earth for paradise is giving up the substance for the shadow.

Victor Hugo

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

Victor Hugo

It seemed to be a necessary ritual that he should prepare himself for sleep by meditating under the solemnity of the night sky... a mysterious transaction between the infinity of the soul and the infinity of the universe.

Victor Hugo