Victor Hugo Quotes

Prayer is an august avowal of ignorance.

When you get an idea into your head you find it in everything.

To learn to read is to light a fire.

As a means of contrast with the sublime, the grotesque is, in our view, the richest source that nature can offer.

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

Dear God! how beauty varies in nature and art. In a woman the flesh must be like marble; in a statue the marble must be like flesh.

Do not let it be your aim to be something, but to be someone.

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

A language does not become fixed. The human intellect is always on the march, or, if you prefer, in movement, and languages with it.

Wherever the Turkish hoof trods, no grass grows.

For, to make deserts, God, who rules mankind, Begins with kings, and ends the work by wind.

An increase of tenderness always ended by boiling over and turning to indignation. He was at the point where we seek to adopt a course, and to accept what tears us apart.

Stupidity talks, vanity acts.

I like the laughter that opens the lips and the heart, shows at the same time the pearls and the soul.

By putting forward the hands of the clock you shall not advance the hour.

A tempest ceases, a cyclone passes over, a wind dies down, a broken mast can be replaced, a leak can be stopped, a fire extinguished, but what will become of this enormous brute of bronze?

The little people must be sacred to the big ones, and it is from the rights of the weak that the duty of the strong is comprised.

I write with one hand, but I fight with both.

To err is human. To loaf is Parisian.

It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.

Our life dreams the Utopia. Our death achieves the Ideal.

What would be ugly in a garden constitutes beauty in a mountain.

Nothing is more imminent than the impossible . . . what we must always foresee is the unforeseen.

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

If suffer we must, let's suffer on the heights.

He did not study God; he was dazzled by him.

Amnesty is as good for those who give it as for those who receive it. It has the admirable quality of bestowing mercy on both sides.

Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization.

Revolution is the larva of civilization.

Woe, alas, to those who have loved only bodies, forms, appearances! Death will rob them of everything. Try to love souls, you will find them again.

Doing nothing is happiness for children and misery for old men.

I love all men who think, even those who think otherwise than myself.

Press on! A better fate awaits thee.

Death belongs to God alone; by what right do men touch that unknown thing?

All animals are to be found in men and each of theme exists in some man, sometimes several at the time.

A thousand men enslaved fear one beast free.

Kings are for nations in their swaddling-clothes: France has attained her majority.

God will reward you,' he said. 'You must be an angel since you care for flowers.

Do you know what friendship is... it is to be brother and sister; two souls which touch without mingling, two fingers on one hand.

I believe in religion against the religious; in the pitifulness of orisons, and in the sublimity of prayer.

I would rather be the head of a fly than the tail of a lion.

If you wish to understand what Revolution is, call it Progress; and if you wish to understand what Progress is, call it Tomorrow.

"Animals are happy," said the queen. "They run no risk of going to hell." "They are there already," replied Josiana.

Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions

I am a soul. I know well that what I shall render up to the grave is not myself. That which is myself will go elsewhere. Earth, thou art not my abyss!

Philosophy is the microscope of thought.

The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.

Let the one fight for his flag, and the other for his ideal, and let them both imagine that they are fighting for the country; the strife will be colossal.

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?

The paradise of the rich is made out of the hell of the poor.