Victor Hugo Quotes

"A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil."

"A faith is a necessity to a man. Woe to him who believes in nothing."

"A library implies an act of faith."

"A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor."

"A saint addicted to excessive self-abnegation is a dangerous associate; he may infect you with poverty, and a stiffening of those joints which are needed for advancement - in a word, with more renunciation than you care for - and so you flee the contagion."

"Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters."

"All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come."

"An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise."

"An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come."

"Architecture has recorded the great ideas of the human race. Not only every religious symbol, but every human thought has its page in that vast book."

"As the purse is emptied, the heart is filled."

"At the shrine of friendship never say die, let the wine of friendship never run dry."

"Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings."

"Be like the bird that, passing on her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings."

"But when ill indeed, Even dismissing the doctor don't always succeed."

"Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees."

"Civil war? What does that mean? Is there any foreign war? Isn't every war fought between men, between brothers?"

"Close by the Rights of Man, at the least set beside them, are the Rights of the Spirit."

"Common sense is in spite of, not as the result of education."

"Curiosity is one of the forms of feminine bravery."

"Each man should frame life so that at some future hour fact and his dreaming meet."

"Everything being a constant carnival, there is no carnival left."

"Fashions have done more harm than revolutions."

"Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age."

"Genius is a promontory jutting out into the infinite."

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

"Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come."

"Habit is the nursery of errors."

"Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace."

"Have no fear of robbers or murderers. They are external dangers, petty dangers. We should fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices the real murders. The great dangers are within us. Why worry about what threatens our heads or purses? Let us think instead of what threatens our souls."

"He who opens a school door, closes a prison."

"He, who every morning plans the transactions of the day, and follows that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through a labyrinth of the most busy life."

"Hell is an outrage on humanity. When you tell me that your deity made you in his image, I reply that he must have been very ugly."

"Hope is the word which God has written on the brow of every man."

"How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said."

"Human intelligence discovered a way of perpetuating itself, one not only more durable and more resistant than architecture, but also simpler and easier."

"I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses."

"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."

"Indigestion is charged by God with enforcing morality on the stomach."

"Initiative is doing the right thing without being told."

""Is there no hope?" the sick man said, The silent doctor shook his head, And took his leave with signs of sorrow, Despairing of his fee to-morrow."

"It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life."

"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."

"Joy's smile is much closer to tears than laughter."

"Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face."

"Liberation is not deliverance."

"Life is the flower for which love is the honey."

"Mankind is not a circle with a single center but an ellipse with two focal points of which facts are one and ideas the other."

"Most commonly revolt is born of material circumstances; but insurrection is always a moral phenomenon. Revolt is Masaniello, who led the Neapolitan insurgents in 1647; but insurrection is Spartacus. Insurrection is a thing of the spirit, revolt is a thing of the stomach."

"Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent."

"My tastes are aristocratic, my actions democratic."

"Nations, like stars, are entitled to eclipse. All is well, provided the light returns and the eclipse does not become endless night. Dawn and resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul."

"No one ever keeps a secret so well as a child."

"Nothing else in the world... not all the armies... is so powerful as an idea whose time has come."

"One can resist the invasion of an army but one cannot resist the invasion of ideas."

"One is not idle because one is absorbed. There is both visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil, to think is to do. The crossed arms work, the clasped hands act. The eyes upturned to Heaven are an act of creation."

"Our acts make or mar us, we are the children of our own deeds."

"Peace is the virtue of civilization. War is its crime."

"Society is a republic. When an individual tries to lift themselves above others, they are dragged down by the mass, either by ridicule or slander."

"Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause."

"The brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over we realize this: that the human race has been roughly handled, but that it has advanced."

"The convent, which belongs to the West as it does to the East, to antiquity as it does to the present time, to Buddhism and Muhammadanism as it does to Christianity, is one of the optical devices whereby man gains a glimpse of infinity."

"The first symptom of love in a young man is timidity; in a girl boldness."

"The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves."

"The mountains, the forest, and the sea, render men savage; they develop the fierce, but yet do not destroy the human."

"The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather in spite of ourselves."

"There are fathers who do not love their children; there is no grandfather who does not adore his grandson."

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

"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."

"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."

"There is nothing like a dream to create the future."

"There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time as come."

"Thought is the labor of the intellect, reverie is its pleasure."

"To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark."

"To love another person is to see the face of God."

"To love beauty is to see light."

"To think of shadows is a serious thing."

"Toleration is the best religion."

"Try as you will, you cannot annihilate that eternal relic of the human heart, love."

"We are on the side of religion as opposed to religions, and we are among those who believe in the wretched inadequacy of sermons and the sublimity of prayer."

"When a man is out of sight, it is not too long before he is out of mind."

"When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right."

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

"Whenever a man's friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old."

"Wisdom is a sacred communion."

"You punch me, I punch back. I do not believe it's good for ones self-respect to be a punching bag."