Victor Hugo quotes

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) was a renowned French poet, novelist, and playwright. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in French literature. Known for his epic novels, such as Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Hugo's works explore themes like social injustice, love, and human suffering. His writings reflect his deep empathy and passion for political and social reforms. Hugo's literary genius was matched by his activism, as he actively fought for causes like abolition, democracy, and the rights of the marginalized. Beyond his literary contributions, Hugo's impact continues to be felt through his profound influence on French cultural and intellectual spheres.

What makes night within us may leave stars.

- Victor Hugo

There is only one thing stronger than all the armies of the world: and that is an idea whose time has come.

- Victor Hugo

There is nothing like dream to create the future. Utopia to-day, flesh and blood tomorrow.

- Victor Hugo

Because a fact seems strange to you, you conclude that it is not one. All science, however, commences by being strange. Science is successive. It goes from one wonder to another. It mounts by a ladder. The science of today would seem extravagant to the science of a former time. Ptolemy would believe Newton mad.

- Victor Hugo

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

- Victor Hugo

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

- Victor Hugo

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

- Victor Hugo

Toleration is the best religion.

- Victor Hugo

Evil. Mistrust those who rejoice at it even more than those who do it.

- Victor Hugo

It is the end. But of what? The end of France? No. The end of kings? Yes.

- 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

I am an intelligent river which has reflected successively all the banks before which it has flowed by meditating only on the images offered by those changing shores.

- Victor Hugo

What a grand thing, to be loved! What a grander thing still, to love!

- Victor Hugo

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

- 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

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.

- Victor Hugo

Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.

- Victor Hugo

Strange to say, the luminous world is the invisible world; the luminous world is that which we do not see. Our eyes of flesh see only night.

- Victor Hugo

Smallness in a great man seems smaller by its disproportion with all the rest.

- Victor Hugo

Freedom in art, freedom in society, this is the double goal towards which all consistent and logical minds must strive.

- Victor Hugo

Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause.

- Victor Hugo

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

- 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

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

- Victor Hugo

Because one doesn't like the way things are is no reason to be unjust towards God.

- 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

Prayer is an august avowal of ignorance.

- Victor Hugo

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

- Victor Hugo

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

- Victor Hugo

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

- Victor Hugo