Welcome to our collection of inspiring and profound quotes by one of the most revered literary figures in history, Victor Hugo. Renowned for his immense contributions to French literature during the 19th century, Hugo’s words continue to resonate with readers worldwide, transcending time and cultural boundaries. His works, including masterpieces like Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, not only captivated audiences with their gripping narratives but also delved deep into the complexities of human nature, morality, and societal injustices.
Victor Hugo’s writing exudes a rare combination of poetic beauty and profound insight, offering timeless reflections on love, compassion, courage, and the human condition. Whether through his stirring novels, poignant poetry, or thought-provoking essays, Hugo’s words have the power to stir the soul, ignite the imagination, and awaken the conscience. As a champion of social justice and a staunch advocate for the oppressed, his legacy extends far beyond the realms of literature, inspiring generations to strive for a better, more compassionate world. Below, you’ll find a curated selection of Victor Hugo’s most memorable quotes, ready to be shared, pondered upon, or creatively presented to uplift and inspire.
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
The soul has illusions as the bird has wings: it is supported by them. Victor Hugo
It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life. Victor Hugo
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. Victor Hugo
Genius is a promontory jutting out into the infinite. Victor Hugo
When a man is out of sight, it is not too long before he is out of mind. Victor Hugo
The mountains, the forest, and the sea, render men savage; they develop the fierce, but yet do not destroy the human. Victor Hugo
What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past. Victor Hugo
In the French language, there is a great gulf between prose and poetry; in English, there is hardly any difference. It is a splendid privilege of the great literary languages Greek, Latin, and French that they possess a prose. English has not this privilege. There is no prose in English. Victor Hugo
Civil war? What does that mean? Is there any foreign war? Isn’t every war fought between men, between brothers? Victor Hugo
When a woman is talking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes. Victor Hugo
A library implies an act of faith. Victor Hugo
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
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. Victor Hugo
Stupidity talks, vanity acts. Victor Hugo
Perseverance, secret of all triumphs. Victor Hugo
Love, in the eyes of the world, is either a carnal appetite or a vague fancy, which possession extinguishes or absence destroys. That is why it is commonly said, with a strange abuse of words, that passion does not endure. Victor Hugo
The wicked envy and hate; it is their way of admiring. Victor Hugo
All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come. Victor Hugo
Initiative is doing the right thing without being told. Victor Hugo
There are thoughts which are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the posture of the body, the soul is on its knees. Victor Hugo
To love another person is to see the face of God. Victor Hugo
The word is the Verb, and the Verb is God. Victor Hugo
We see past time in a telescope and present time in a microscope. Hence the apparent enormities of the present. Victor Hugo
An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise. Victor Hugo
There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul. Victor Hugo
One sees qualities at a distance and defects at close range. Victor Hugo
Peace is the virtue of civilization. War is its crime. Victor Hugo
When a man understands the art of seeing, he can trace the spirit of an age and the features of a king even in the knocker on a door. Victor Hugo
Curiosity is one of the forms of feminine bravery. Victor Hugo
There is nothing like a dream to create the future. Victor Hugo
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. Victor Hugo
To contemplate is to look at shadows. Victor Hugo
Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters. Victor Hugo
One sometimes says: ‘He killed himself because he was bored with life.’ One ought rather to say: ‘He killed himself because he was bored by lack of life.’ Victor Hugo
Hope is the word which God has written on the brow of every man. Victor Hugo
Son, brother, father, lover, friend. There is room in the heart for all the affections, as there is room in heaven for all the stars. Victor Hugo
Be like the bird who, pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing she hath wings. Victor Hugo
Habit is the nursery of errors. Victor Hugo
Fashions have done more harm than revolutions. Victor Hugo
Sublime upon sublime scarcely presents a contrast, and we need a little rest from everything, even the beautiful. Victor Hugo
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. Victor Hugo
To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do. Victor Hugo
The three great problems of this century; the degradation of man in the proletariat, the subjection of women through hunger, the atrophy of the child by darkness. Victor Hugo
The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real that we exist; it is by the ideal that we live. Victor Hugo
Concision in style, precision in thought, decision in life. Victor Hugo
Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent. Victor Hugo
It is by suffering that human beings become angels. Victor Hugo
The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves. Victor Hugo
Love is a portion of the soul itself, and it is of the same nature as the celestial breathing of the atmosphere of paradise. Victor Hugo
Men become accustomed to poison by degrees. Victor Hugo
Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age. Victor Hugo
Toleration is the best religion. Victor Hugo
A faith is a necessity to a man. Woe to him who believes in nothing. Victor Hugo
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. Victor Hugo
Doing nothing is happiness for children and misery for old men. Victor Hugo
The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather in spite of ourselves. Victor Hugo
Short as life is, we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time. Victor Hugo
Joy’s smile is much closer to tears than laughter. Victor Hugo
Death has its revelations: the great sorrows which open the heart open the mind as well; light comes to us with our grief. As for me, I have faith; I believe in a future life. How could I do otherwise? My daughter was a soul; I saw this soul. I touched it, so to speak. Victor Hugo
Those who live are those who fight. Victor Hugo
Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come. Victor Hugo
Puns are the droppings of soaring wits. Victor Hugo
What a grand thing, to be loved! What a grander thing still, to love! Victor Hugo
Virtue has a veil, vice a mask. Victor Hugo
There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time as come. Victor Hugo
We say that slavery has vanished from European civilization, but this is not true. Slavery still exists, but now it applies only to women and its name is prostitution. Victor Hugo
Liberation is not deliverance. Victor Hugo
To rise from error to truth is rare and beautiful. Victor Hugo
The learned man knows that he is ignorant. Victor Hugo
To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark. Victor Hugo
To love is to act. Victor Hugo
You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life. Victor Hugo
What would be ugly in a garden constitutes beauty in a mountain. Victor Hugo
He who opens a school door, closes a prison. Victor Hugo
It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live. Victor Hugo
Common sense is in spite of, not as the result of education. Victor Hugo
The man who does not know other languages, unless he is a man of genius, necessarily has deficiencies in his ideas. Victor Hugo
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! Victor Hugo
To love beauty is to see light. Victor Hugo
A war between Europeans is a civil war. Victor Hugo
Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant. Victor Hugo
He who is not capable of enduring poverty is not capable of being free. Victor Hugo
When God desires to destroy a thing, he entrusts its destruction to the thing itself. Every bad institution of this world ends by suicide. Victor Hugo
A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil. Victor Hugo
Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face. Victor Hugo
Our life dreams the Utopia. Our death achieves the Ideal. Victor Hugo
Life is the flower for which love is the honey. Victor Hugo
The ox suffers, the cart complains. Victor Hugo
Life’s greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved. Victor Hugo
Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers. Victor Hugo
Sorrow is a fruit. God does not make it grow on limbs too weak to bear it. Victor Hugo
A mother’s arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them. Victor Hugo
There are fathers who do not love their children; there is no grandfather who does not adore his grandson. Victor Hugo
The most powerful symptom of love is a tenderness which becomes at times almost insupportable. Victor Hugo
As the purse is emptied, the heart is filled. Victor Hugo
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. Victor Hugo
Freedom in art, freedom in society, this is the double goal towards which all consistent and logical minds must strive. Victor Hugo
Everything being a constant carnival, there is no carnival left. Victor Hugo
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. Victor Hugo
