Victor Hugo

Find the best quotes, maxims and aphorisms of Victor Hugo

Biography : French writer, poet and dramatist.
Born: 1802 - Died: 1885
Period:
19th century
Place of birth: France
France

France

Victor Hugo - Quotes

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

problem

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

time

Short as life is, we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time.
Victor Hugo

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

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

happiness

A library implies an act of faith.
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

Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.
Victor Hugo

To think is of itself to be useful it is always and in all cases a striving toward God.
Victor Hugo

The first symptom of love in a young man is timidity in a girl boldness.
Victor Hugo

love

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

Sorrow is a fruit. God does not make it grow on limbs too weak to bear it.
Victor Hugo

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

hope

People do not lack strength they lack will.
Victor Hugo

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

time

Toleration is the best religion.
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

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

time

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

There have been in this century only one great man and one great thing: Napoleon and liberty. For want of the great man, let us have the great thing.
Victor Hugo

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

Nature has made a pebble and a female. The lapidary makes the diamond, and the lover makes the woman.
Victor Hugo

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

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

time

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

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

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