Victor Hugo Quotes

451 Sourced Quotes

Jean Prouvaire was timid only in repose. Once excited, he burst forth, a sort of mirth accentuated his enthusiasm, and he was at once both laughing and lyric.

Victor Hugo
Everything falls and is effaced. A few feet under the ground reigns so profound a silence, and yet, so much tumult on the surface!

Victor Hugo
These two halves of God, the Pope and the emperor.

Victor Hugo
There are thoughts which are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the posture of the body, the soul is on its knees.

Victor Hugo
Marius and Cosette did not ask where this would lead them. They looked at themselves as arrived. It is a strange pretension for men to ask that love should lead them somewhere.

Victor Hugo
You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around everything that shines. Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats. Do not bother yourself about it; disdain. Keep your mind serene as you keep your life clear.

Victor Hugo
The transept belfry and the two towers were to him three great cages, the birds in which, taught by him, would sing for him alone. Yet it was these same bells which had made him deaf; but mothers are often fondest of the child who has made them suffer most.

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

Victor Hugo
Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are battlefields which have their heroes; obscure heroes, sometimes greater than the illustrious heroes.

Victor Hugo
Gavroche had fallen only to rise again; he sat up, a long stream of blood rolled down his face, he raised both arms in air, looked in the direction whence the shot came, and began to sing.

Victor Hugo
Often the losing of a battle leads to the winning of progress. Less glory but greater liberty: the drum is silent and the voices of reason can be heard.

Victor Hugo
The aim of art is almost divine: to bring to life again if it is writing history, to create if it is writing poetry.

Victor Hugo
There are many tongues to talk, and but few heads to think.

Victor Hugo
Let us study things that are no more. It is necessary to understand them, if only to avoid them.

Victor Hugo
Great edifices, like great mountains, are the work of ages.

Victor Hugo
A smile is the same as sunshine; it banishes winter from the human countenance.

Victor Hugo
The soul helps the body, and at certain moments raises it. It is the only bird that sustains its cage.

Victor Hugo
Let us leave to the brain what belongs to it, and agree that the work of the men of genius is of the superhuman, the offspring of man.

Victor Hugo
There is a sacred horror about everything grand. It is easy to admire mediocrity and hills; but whatever is too lofty, a genius as well as a mountain, an assembly as well as a masterpiece, seen too near, is appalling.

Victor Hugo
Everything comes and goes. To-day in joy, to-morrow in sorrow. We advance, we retreat, we struggle; then, the eternal and profound silence of death!

Victor Hugo