Victor Hugo Quotes

Every one has noticed the taste which cats have for pausing and lounging between the two leaves of a half-shut door. Who is there who has not said to a cat, "Do come in! ~ Victor Hugo

Strong and rare natures are thus created; misery, almost always a stepmother, is sometimes a mother; privation gives birth to power of soul and mind; distress is the nurse of self-respect; misfortune is a good breast for great souls. ~ Victor Hugo

Far be it from me to insult the pun! I honor it in proportion to its merits; nothing more. All the most august, the most sublime, the most charming of humanity, and perhaps outside of humanity, have made puns. ~ Victor Hugo

Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face. ~ Victor Hugo

The best minds have their soft spots and sometimes feel somewhat bruised by the scant respect of logic. ~ Victor Hugo

Since we shall love each other, I shall be great and you shall be rich. ~ Victor Hugo

The soul has illusions as the bird has wings: it is supported by them. ~ Victor Hugo

the phantom of social justice tormented him. ~ Victor Hugo

Ecclesiastes calls you the All-powerful; the Maccabees call you the Creator; the Epistle to the Ephesians calls you liberty; Baruch calls you Immensity; the Psalms call you Wisdom and Truth; John calls you Light; the Books of Kings call you Lord; Exodus calls you Providence; Leviticus, Sanctity; Esdras, Justice; the creation calls you God; man calls you Father; but Solomon calls you Compassion, and that is the most beautiful of all your names. ~ Victor Hugo

In these creations, life and symbolic value are not in contradiction: they intensify each other. ~ Victor Hugo

There is no such thing as a little country. The greatness of a people is no more determined by their numbers than the greatness of a man is by his height. ~ Victor Hugo

Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters. ~ Victor Hugo

To meditate is to labour; to think is to act. Folded arms work, closed hands perform, a gaze fixed on heaven is a toil. ~ Victor Hugo

People generally will soon understand that writers should be judged, not according to rules and species, which are contrary to nature and art, but according to the immutable principles of the art of composition, and the special laws of their individual temperaments. ~ Victor Hugo

Going about one's native land one is inclined to take many things for granted, roads and buildings, roofs, windows and doorways, the walls that shelter strangers, the house one has never entered, trees which are like other trees, pavements which are no more than cobblestones. But when we are distant from them we find that those things have become dear to us, a street, trees and roofs, blank walls, doors and windows; we have entered those houses without knowing it, we have left something of our heart in the very stonework. Those places we no longer see, perhaps will never see again but still remember, have acquired and aching charm; they return to us with the melancholy of ghosts, a hallowed vision and as it were the true face of France. We love and evoke them such as they were; and such as to us they still are, we cling to them and will not have them altered, for the face of our country is our mother's face. ~ 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

Water! pretending to be pure, thou resemblest false friends. Thou art warm at the top and cold at bottom. ~ Victor Hugo

You've picked up a rummy habit," James Banister said cordially as they approached one another. "Sort of a crouch. You look a bit ... well, I'm sorry, but you look a bit Victor Hugo, if you catch my drift. Would you like to adjourn to a cathedral or something? ~ Nick Harkaway

With Cosette's garter, Homer would make the Iliad. He would put into his poem an old babbler like me, and he would call him Nestor. ~ Victor Hugo

The slightest contact with logic makes all false arguments disintegrate. ~ Victor Hugo

There have been in this century only one great man and one great thing: Napoleon and liberty. For want of the great man, let us have the great thing. ~ Victor Hugo

She was a lovely blonde, with fine teeth. She had gold and pearls for her dowry; but her gold was on her head, and her pearls were in her mouth. ~ Victor Hugo

We teachers make the road, others will make the journey. ~ Victor Hugo

Did not i say that things would come right of themselves? said the Bishop. Then he added, with a smile, To him who contents himself with the surplice of a curate, God sends the cope of an archbishop. Monseigneur, murmured the cure, throwing back his head with a smile. God or the Devil. ~ Victor Hugo

While contemplating the bride, and eyeing the cake of soap, he muttered between his teeth: 'Tuesday. It was not Tuesday. Was it Tuesday? Perhaps it was Tuesday. Yes, it was Tuesday.'
No one has ever discovered to what this monologue referred. Yes, perchance, this monologue had some connection with the last occasion on which he had dined, three days before, for it was now Friday. ~ Victor Hugo

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. ~ Victor Hugo

Books are remote but reliable friends. ~ Victor Hugo

To be a saint is the exception; to be an upright man is the rule. Err, fall, sin if you will, but be upright. ~ Victor Hugo

In our civilization there are fearful hours - such are those when the criminal law pronounces shipwreck upon a man. What a mournful moment is that in which society withdraws itself and gives up a thinking being forever. ~ Victor Hugo

A mother's arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them. ~ Victor Hugo

Woe, alas, to the one who shall have loved bodies, forms, appearances only. Death will take everything from him. Try to love souls, you shall find them again ~ Victor Hugo

Reason is intelligence taking exercise. Imagination is intelligence with an erection. ~ 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

Among all these passionate hearts and all these undoubting minds there was one skeptic. How did he happen to be there? From juxtaposition. The name of this skeptic was Grantaire, and he usually signed with this rebus: R. Grantaire was a man who took good care not to believe in anything. ~ Victor Hugo

I am come to warn you. I am come to impeach your happiness. It is fashioned out of the misery of your neighbour. You have everything, and that is composed of the nothing of others… As for me, I am but a voice. Mankind is a mouth, of which I am the cry. You shall hear me! ~ Victor Hugo

When I see humanity ripped apart and events patched up, and so many spots on the sun and so many holes in the moon, when I see so much misery everywhere, I suspect that God is not rich. The appearance exists, it is true, but I feel that he is hard up. ~ Victor Hugo

Nihilism has no substance. There is no such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing. ~ Victor Hugo

The ideal and the beautiful are identical; the ideal corresponds to the idea, and beauty to form; hence idea and substance are cognate. ~ Victor Hugo

The visit took place. It was a formidable campaign; a nocturnal battle against pestilence and suffocation. ~ Victor Hugo

When they saw him making money, they said, "He is a man of business." When they saw him scattering his money about, they said, "He is an ambitious man." When he was seen to decline honors, they said, "He is an adventurer." When they saw him repulse society, they said, "He is a brute. ~ Victor Hugo

Innocence wears its own crown, Monsieur; it needs no added dignity; it is as sublime in rags as in royal robes. ~ Victor Hugo

The peculiar property of truth is never to commit excesses. What need has it of exaggeration? There ~ 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

That is the explanation of war, an outrage by humanity upon humanity in despite of humanity. ~ Victor Hugo

This is what floats up confusedly, pell-mell, for the year 1817, and is now forgotten. History neglects nearly all these particulars, and cannot do otherwise; the infinity would overwhelm it. Nevertheless, these details, which are wrongly called trivial, - there are no trivial facts in humanity, nor little leaves in vegetation, - are useful. It is of the physiognomy of the years that the physiognomy of the centuries is composed. In this year of 1817 four young Parisians arranged "a fine farce. ~ Victor Hugo

To die is nothing; but it is terrible not to live. ~ Victor Hugo

To love your neighbors is to see the face of God.
- Les Miserables ~ Victor Hugo

A noble soul and real poetic talent are almost always inseparable. ~ Victor Hugo

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

In the case of sand as in that of woman, there is a fineness which is treacherous. ~ Victor Hugo

Reaction - a boat which is going against the current but which does not prevent the river from flowing on. ~ Victor Hugo

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

Man is at the mercy of events. Life is a perpetual succession of events, and we must submit to it. We never know from what quarter the sudden blow of chance will come. Catastrophe and good fortune come upon us and then depart, like unexpected visitors. They have their own laws, their own orbits, their own gravitational force, all independent of man. ~ Victor Hugo

This child was well muffled up in a pair of man's trousers, but he did not get them from his father, and a woman's chemise, but he did not get it from his mother. Some people or other had clothed him in rags out of charity. Still, he had a father and a mother. But his father did not think of him, and his mother did not love him. He was one of those children most deserving of pity, among all, one of those who have father ~ Victor Hugo

Do not economize on the hymeneal rites; do not prune them of their splendor, nor split farthings on the day when you are radiant. A wedding is not house-keeping. ~ Victor Hugo

In love there are no friends everywhere where there is a pretty woman hostility is open. ~ Victor Hugo

This first glance of a soul which does not yet know itself is like dawn in the heavens; it is the awakening of something radiant and unknown. ~ Victor Hugo

There is a crime commited by the society against the individual,a crime that is commited afresh each day ~ Victor Hugo

The first proof of charity in a priest, especially a bishop, is poverty. ~ Victor Hugo

Men are still men. The despot's wickedness Comes of ill teaching, and of power's excess,
Comes of the purple he from childhood wears, Slaves would be tyrants if the chance were theirs. ~ Victor Hugo

Is it not when the fall is the lowest that charity ought to be the greatest? ~ Victor Hugo

To contemplate is to look at shadows. ~ Victor Hugo

Part 1
A Just Man ~ Victor Hugo

Madame Thenardier was approaching her forties, which is equivalent to fifty in a woman ... ~ Victor Hugo

Primitive times are lyrical, ancient times epical, modern times dramatic. The ode sings of eternity, the epic imparts solemnity tohistory, the drama depicts life. The characteristic of the first poetry is ingeniousness, of the second, simplicity, of the third, truth. ~ Victor Hugo

Victor-Marie Hugo (26 February 1802 - 22 May 1885) was a French poet, novelist, playwright, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights campaigner, and perhaps the most influential exponent of the Romantic movement in France. In France, Hugo's literary reputation rests on his poetic and dramatic output. Among many volumes of poetry, Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles stand particularly high in critical esteem, and Hugo is sometimes identified as the greatest French poet. In the English-speaking world his best-known works are often the novels Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris (sometimes translated into English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame). Though extremely conservative in his youth, Hugo moved to the political left as the decades passed; he became a passionate supporter of republicanism, and his work touches upon most of the political and social issues and artistic trends of his time. Source: Wikipedia ~ Victor Hugo

He visited the poor so long as he had any money; when he no longer had any, he visited the rich. ~ Victor Hugo

To crush fanaticism and to venerate the infinite, such is the law. Let us not confine ourselves to prostrating ourselves before the tree of creation, and to the contemplation of its branches full of stars. We have a duty to labor over the human soul, to defend the mystery against the miracle, to adore the incomprehensible and reject the absurd, to admit, as an inexplicable fact, only what is necessary, to purify belief, to remove superstitions from above religion; to clear God of caterpillars. ~ Victor Hugo

There is no hypocrisy so great as the words which we say to ourselves, "I wish to know the worst!" At heart we do not wish it at all. We have a dreadful fear of knowing it. Agony is mingled with a dim effort not to see the end. We do not own it to ourselves, but we would draw back if we dared; and when we have advanced, we reproach ourselves for having done so. ~ Victor Hugo

The infinite exists. It is there. If the infinite had no me, the me would be its limit; it would not be the infinite; in other words, it would not be. But it is. Then it has a me. This me of the infinite is God. ~ Victor Hugo

Poetry contains philosophy as the soul contains reason. ~ Victor Hugo

Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing. ~ Victor Hugo

The French Revolution, which is nothing more nor less than the ideal armed with the sword, rose abruptly, and by that very movement, closed the door of evil and opened the door of good.
It released the question, promulgated truth, drove away miasma, purified the century, crowned the people.
We can say it created man a second time, in giving him a second soul, his rights. Page 997 Saint-Denis chapter 7 Argot part III ~ Victor Hugo

The word Gothic, in the sense in which it is generally employed, is wholly unsuitable, but wholly consecrated. Hence we accept it and we adopt it, like all the rest of the world, to characterize the architecture of the second half of the Middle Ages, where the ogive is the principle which succeeds the architecture of the first period, of which the semi-circle is the father. ~ Victor Hugo

What is called honors and dignities, and even honor and dignity, is generally fool's gold. ~ Victor Hugo

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

He loved books; books are cold but safe friends. ~ Victor Hugo

The moment comes when protest is not enough; reason must give way to action, and force ensure what thought has conceived. ~ Victor Hugo

Ah!' said Michel, tempted, 'you have modern poems?'
'Of course. For instance, Martillac's 'Electric Harmonies,' which won a prize last year from the Academic of Sciences, and Monsieur de Pulfasse's 'Meditations on Oxygen;' and we have the 'Poetic Parallelogram,' and even the 'Decarbonated Odes ... '
Michel couldn't bear hearing another word and found himself outside again, stupefied and overcome. Not even this tiny amount of art had escaped the pernicious influence of the age! Science, Chemistry, Mechanics had invaded the realm of poetry! 'And such things are read,' he murmured as he hurried through the streets, ' perhaps even bought! And signed by the authors and placed on the shelves marked 'Literature.' But not one copy of Balzac, not one work by Victor Hugo! Where can I find such things-where, if not the Library ... ~ Jules Verne

Perseverance, secret of all triumphs. ~ Victor Hugo

Errors are excllent projectiles ... Factions are blind men who aim straight ~ Victor Hugo

Suddenly she let fly with this: "It's nice here!"
It was a ghastly dump, but she felt free. ~ Victor Hugo

To love is the half of to believe. ~ Victor Hugo

Plea Against the Death Penalty
Look, examine, reflect. You hold capital punishment up as an example. Why? Because of what it teaches. And just what is it that you wish to teach by means of this example? That thou shalt not kill. And how do you teach that "thou shalt not kill"? By killing.
I have examined the death penalty under each of its two aspects: as a direct action, and as an indirect one. What does it come down to? Nothing but something horrible and useless, nothing but a way of shedding blood that is called a crime when an individual commits it, but is (sadly) called "justice" when society brings it about. Make no mistake, you lawmakers and judges, in the eyes of God as in those of conscience, what is a crime when individuals do it is no less an offense when society commits the deed. ~ Victor Hugo

Every diminution of the liberty of the press is followed by a diminution of civilization. Wherever we see the freedom of the press interfered with, there we see the nutrition of the human family interrupted. ~ Victor Hugo

Human intelligence discovered a way of perpetuating itself, one not only more durable and more resistant than architecture, but also simpler and easier. Architecture was dethroned. The stone letters of Orpheus gave way to the lead letters of Gutenburg. The book will kill the edifice. ~ Victor Hugo

Who has been unhooking the stars without my permission, and putting them on the table in the guise of candles? ~ Victor Hugo

It seems to me that I am shooting a flower. ~ Victor Hugo

Marius set out at his accustomed hour for the Luxembourg. He met Courfeyrac on the way and pretended not to see him. Courfeyrac said later to his friends: 'I've just seen Marius's new hat and suit with Marius inside them. I suppose he was going to sit for an examination. He looked thoroughly silly. ~ Victor Hugo

some even affirmed that they had passed the night across the threshold of the great door, in order to make sure that they should be the first to pass in. The crowd ~ Victor Hugo

Winter always carries with it something of our sadness; then April came, that daybreak of summer, fresh like every dawn, gay like every childhood; weeping a little sometimes like the infant that it is. Nature in this month has charming gleams which pass from the sky, the clouds, the trees, the fields, and the flowers, into the heart of man. ~ Victor Hugo

The first symptom of true love in a young man
is timidity; in a young girl, boldness. This is surprising, yet nothing is more simple. It is the two sexes tending
to approach each other and assuming, each the other's
qualities.
That day, Cosette's glance drove Marius beside himself,
and Marius' glance set Cosette to trembling. Marius went
away confident, and Cosette uneasy. From that day forth,
they adored each other.
The first thing that Cosette felt was a confused and profound
melancholy. It seemed to her that her soul had become
black since the day before. She no longer recognized it. The
whiteness of soul in young girls, which is composed of coldness
and gayety, resembles snow. It melts in love, which is
its sun.
Cosette did not know what love was. She had never heard
the word uttered in its terrestrial sense. She did not know
what name to give to what she now felt. Is any one the less ill
because one does not know the name of one's malady?
She loved with all the more passion because she loved ignorantly.
She did not know whether it was a good thing or a
bad thing, useful or dangerous, eternal or temporary, allowable
or prohibited; she loved. She would have been greatly
astonished, had any one said to her: 'You do not sleep? But
that is forbidden! You do not eat? Why, that is very bad! You
have oppressions and palpitations of the heart? That must
not ~ Victor Hugo

Forget not, never forget that you have promised me to use this silver to become an honest man ... Jean Valjean, my brother: you belong no longer to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I am buying for you. I withdraw it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God! ~ Victor Hugo

To speak out aloud when alone is as it were to have a dialogue with the divinity which is within. ~ Victor Hugo

The provincial dandy wore the longest of spurs and the fiercest of mustaches. ~ Victor Hugo

His whole life was now summed up in two words: absolute uncertainty within an impenetrable fog. ~ Victor Hugo

Nothing on the horizon; nothing in heaven.

He implores the expanse, the waves, the seaweed, the reef; they are deaf. He beseeches the tempest; the imperturbable tempest obeys only the infinite.

Around him darkness, fog, solitude, the stormy and non- sentient tumult, the undefined curling of those wild waters. In him horror and fatigue. Beneath him the depths. Not a point of support. He thinks of the gloomy adventures of the corpse in the limitless shadow. The bottomless cold paralyzes him. His hands contract convulsively; they close, and grasp nothingness. Winds, clouds, whirlwinds, gusts, useless stars! What is to be done? The desperate man gives up; he is weary, he chooses the alternative of death; he resists not; he lets himself go; he abandons his grip; and then he tosses forevermore in the lugubrious dreary depths of engulfment.

Oh, implacable march of human societies! Oh, losses of men and of souls on the way! Ocean into which falls all that the law lets slip! Disastrous absence of help! Oh, moral death!

The sea is the inexorable social night into which the penal laws fling their condemned. The sea is the immensity of wretchedness.

The soul, going down stream in this gulf, may become a corpse. Who shall resuscitate it? ~ Victor Hugo

Those are rare who fall without becoming degraded; there is a point, moreover, at which the unfortunate and the infamous are associated and confounded in a single word, a fatal word, Les Misérables. ~ Victor Hugo

Police chiefs don't think a cat can possibly turn into a lion; and yet, it happens. ~ Victor Hugo

He was no longer Jean Valjean, but No. 24601. ~ Victor Hugo