Victor Hugo - Man Quotes

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I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes, - and the stars through his soul.

Victor Hugo
A phenomenon often seen. A sceptic adhering to a believer; that is as simple as the law of the complementary colours. What we lack attracts us. Nobody loves the light like the blind man...

Victor Hugo
Whenever we encounter the Infinite in man, however imperfectly understood, we treat it with respect. Whether in the synagogue, the mosque, the pagoda, or the wigwam, there is a hideous aspect which we execrate and a sublime aspect which we venerate. So great a subject for spiritual contemplation, such measureless dreaming - the echo of God on the human wall!

Victor Hugo
Homer is one of the men of genius who solve that fine problem of art — the finest of all, perhaps — truly to depict humanity by the enlargement of man: that is, to generate the real in the ideal.

Victor Hugo
One must fill oneself with human science. Above all and in spite of all, be a man. Do not fear to surcharge yourself with humanity. Ballast your mind with reality and then throw yourself into the sea — the sea of inspiration.

Victor Hugo
A man without a woman is like a pistol without a trigger; it is the woman who makes the man go off.

Victor Hugo
In this way, his unhappy soul struggled with its anguish. Eighteen hundred years before this unfortunate man, the mysterious Being, in whom all the sanctities and all the sufferings of humanity come together, He too, while the olive trees trembled in the fierce breath of the Infinite, had brushed away the fearful cup that appeared before him, streaming with shadow and running over with darkness, in the star-filled depths.

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

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
Nature has no candor. She shows herself to man with her face turned away.

Victor Hugo
In the twentieth century war will be dead, the scaffold will be dead, animosity will be dead, royalty will be dead, and dogmas will be dead; but Man will live. For all there will be but one country—that country the whole earth; for all there will be but one hope—that hope the whole heaven.

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

Victor Hugo
The truth of an upright man must be accepted on his own terms. Moreover, since natures vary, we must agree that all the beauties of human excellence may be fostered by faiths that we do not share.

Victor Hugo
Man is not a circle with a single centre; he is an ellipse with two foci. Facts are one, ideas are the other.

Victor Hugo
The greatest products of architecture are less the works of individuals than of society; rather the offspring of a nation's effort, than the inspired flash of a man of genius...

Victor Hugo
Creation lives, grows, and multiplies: man is but a witness.

Victor Hugo
Alas! what does man here below? A little noise in much shadow.

Victor Hugo
The first symptom of true love in a young man is timidity; in a young girl it is boldness.

Victor Hugo
Cimourdain was a pure-minded but gloomy man. He had "the absolute" within him. He had been a priest, which is a solemn thing. Man may have, like the sky, a dark and impenetrable serenity; that something should have caused night to fall in his soul is all that is required. Priesthood had been the cause of night within Cimourdain. Once a priest, always a priest.
Whatever causes night in our souls may leave stars. Cimourdain was full of virtues and truth, but they shine out of a dark background.

Victor Hugo
Wonderful nature has a double meaning, which dazzles great minds and blinds uncultivated souls. When man is ignorant, when the desert is filled with visions, the darkness of solitude is added to the darkness of intelligence; hence, in man, the possibilities of perdition

Victor Hugo
A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil. To think is to do.

Victor Hugo