Victor Hugo Quotes

The supreme happiness in life is the assurance of being loved; of being loved for oneself, even in spite of oneself.

Excess of suffering, as we have seen, had made him in some sort a visionary.

He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two.

In a word, they wanted Progress, that hallowed, good, and gentle thing, and they demanded it in a terrible fashion, with oaths on their lips and weapons in their hands. They were barbarous, yes; but barbarians in the cause of civilization. [...] For our part, if we had to choose between the barbarians of civilization and those civilized upholders of barbarism, we would choose the former.

There are people who observe the rules of honor as we do the stars, from a very long way off.

They were eyes no longer, but had become those fathomless mirrors which in men who have known the depths of suffering may replace the conscious gaze, so that they no longer see reality but reflect the memory of past events.

To owe life to a malefactor . . . to be, in spite of himself, on a level with a fugitive from justice . . . to betray society in order to be true to his own conscience; that all these absurdities . . . should accumulate on himself—this is what prostrated him.

The notary who becomes a deputy, the hack playwright who produces a mock-Corneille, the eunuch who acquires a harem, the journeyman-general who by accident wins the decisive battle of an epoch. [...] All this is what men call genius, just as they call a painted face beauty and a richly attired figure majesty. They confound the brilliance of the firmament with the star-shaped footprints of a duck in the mud.

Did any voice whisper to him that he was at a turning-point in his life, that henceforth there could be no middle way for him, that he must become either the best of men or the worst, rise even higher than the bishop himself or sink lower than the felon, reach supreme heights of goodness or become a monster of depravity?

We are not among those who sing the praises of war; we tell the truth about it when the need arises. War has tragic splendors which we have not sought to conceal, but it also has its especial squalors, among which is the prompt stripping of the bodies of the dead. The day following a battle always dawns on naked corpses.

Since there is always more misery in the depths than compassion in the heights, everything was given, so to speak, before it was received

He sought to counsel and soothe the despairing by pointing to the resigned, and to transform the grief which sees only a pit into the grief with sees a star.

[You] do not care for the cruder aspect of truth. Christ cared. He drove the money-lenders from the temple. His scourge was a great teller of truths.

Progress must believe in God. The good cannot be served by impiety. An atheist is an evil leader of the human race.

Whom man kills God restores to life; whom the brothers pursue the Father redeems. Pray and believe and go onward into life.”

He who knows the answer to this knows all things. He is alone. His name is God.

It is a charming quality of the happiness we inspire in others that, far from being diminished like a reflection, it comes back to us enhanced.

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

There are men who dig for gold; he dug for compassion. Poverty was his goldmine; and the universality of suffering a reason for the universality of charity.

The fiercest animals are disarmed by a tribute to their young. The mother thanked her and invited her to sit on the bench by the door while she herself remained seated on the step.

His mental attitude was compounded of two very simple principles, admirable in themselves but which, by carrying them to extremes, he made almost evil – respect for authority and hatred of revolt against it.

Ill-treatment had made her sullen and misery had made her ugly. Only the beauty of her eyes remained, and this was the more distressing because, being large, they mirrored a greater measure of unhappiness.

For she learned to laugh, and as she did so her whole appearance changed, its darkness was dispelled.

The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only.

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

Not being heard is no reason for silence.

Laughter is sunshine, it chases winter from the human face.

He who does not weep does not see.

I wanted to see you again, touch you, know who you were, see if I would find you identical with the ideal image of you which had remained with me and perhaps shatter my dream with the aid of reality.

He left her. She was dissatisfied with him. He had preferred to incur her anger rather than cause her pain. He had kept all the pain for himself.

There are plenty who regard a wall behind which something is happening as a very curious thing.

Breathe, hope

Love is like a tree: it grows by itself, roots itself deeply in our being and continues to flourish over a heart in ruin. The inexplicable fact is that the blinder it is, the more tenacious it is. It is never stronger than when it is completely unreasonable.

At the moment when her eyes closed, when all feeling vanished in her, she thought that she felt a touch of fire imprinted on her lips, a kiss more burning than the red-hot iron of the executioner.

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

By making himself a priest made himself a demon.

I bear the dungeon within me; within me is winter, ice, and despair; I have darkness in my soul.

It is to be brother and sister; two souls which touch without mingling, two fingers on one hand.

You would have imagined her at one moment a maniac, at another a queen.

Oh! Love! That is to be two and to be but one. A man and a woman mingled into one angel. It is heaven.

One drop of wine is enough to redden a whole glass of water.

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.

He found that man needs affection, that life without a warming love is but a dry wheel, creaking and grating as it turns.

Nothing makes a man so adventurous as an empty pocket.

Mothers are often fondest of the child which has caused them the greatest pain.

He reached for his pocket, and found there, only reality.

Love is like a tree: it shoots of itself; it strikes it’s roots deeply into our whole being, and frequently continues to put forth green leaves over a heart in ruins. And there is this unaccountable circumstance attending it, that the blinder the passion the more tenacious it is. Never is it stronger than when it is most unreasonable.

His judgement demonstrates that one can be a genius and understand nothing of an art that is not one’s own.

If you know what my love for you is! It is fire; it is molten lead; it is a thousand daggers in my heart.

But alas, if I have not maintained my victory, it is God’s fault for not making man and the devil of equal strength.

The owl goes not into the nest of the lark.