Victor Hugo quote: "It is the essence of truth that it is never excessive. Why should it exaggerate? There is that which should be destroyed and that which should be simply illuminated and studied. How great is the force of benevolent and searching examination! We must not resort to the flame where only light is required."

When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right.
VICTOR HUGO

No one can keep a secret better than a child.
VICTOR HUGO

There are no rules, no models; rather, there are no rules other than the general laws of Nature.
VICTOR HUGO

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

A noble soul and real poetic talent are almost always inseparable.
VICTOR HUGO

One believes others will do what he will do to himself.
VICTOR HUGO

The word is the Verb, and the Verb is God.
VICTOR HUGO

A war between Europeans is a civil war.
VICTOR HUGO

One sometimes says: 'He killed himself because he was bored with life.' One ought rather to ...
VICTOR HUGO

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

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

I would have liked to be - indeed, I should have been - a second Rembrandt.
VICTOR HUGO

Men become accustomed to poison by degrees.
VICTOR HUGO

Sublime upon sublime scarcely presents a contrast, and we need a little rest from everything, even t...
VICTOR HUGO

The animal is ignorant of the fact that he knows. The man is aware of the fact that he is ignorant.
VICTOR HUGO

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

The beautiful has but one type, the ugly has a thousand.
VICTOR HUGO

Hell is an outrage on humanity. When you tell me that your deity made you in his image, I reply that...
VICTOR HUGO

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

The wise man does not grow old, but ripens.
VICTOR HUGO

Love that is not jealous is neither true nor pure.
VICTOR HUGO

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

Without vanity, without coquetry, without curiosity, in a word, without the fall, woman would not be...
VICTOR HUGO

To rise from error to truth is rare and beautiful.
VICTOR HUGO

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

Death has its revelations: the great sorrows which open the heart open the mind as well; light comes...
VICTOR HUGO

When God desires to destroy a thing, he entrusts its destruction to the thing itself. Every bad inst...
VICTOR HUGO

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

Scepticism, that dry caries of the intelligence.
VICTOR HUGO

The learned man knows that he is ignorant.
VICTOR HUGO

Thought is more than a right - it is the very breath of man. Whoever fetters thought attacks man him...
VICTOR HUGO

Rhyme, that enslaved queen, that supreme charm of our poetry, that creator of our meter.
VICTOR HUGO

One sees qualities at a distance and defects at close range.
VICTOR HUGO

Many great actions are committed in small struggles.
VICTOR HUGO

To be perfectly happy it does not suffice to possess happiness, it is necessary to have deserved it.
VICTOR HUGO

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

Everything being a constant carnival, there is no carnival left.
VICTOR HUGO

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, ...
VICTOR HUGO

The ode lives upon the ideal, the epic upon the grandiose, the drama upon the real.
VICTOR HUGO

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

To contemplate is to look at shadows.
VICTOR HUGO

To think of shadows is a serious thing.
VICTOR HUGO

Perseverance, secret of all triumphs.
VICTOR HUGO

Virtue has a veil, vice a mask.
VICTOR HUGO

Style is the substance of the subject called unceasingly to the surface.
VICTOR HUGO

Stupidity talks, vanity acts.
VICTOR HUGO

Blessed be Providence which has given to each his toy: the doll to the child, the child to the woman...
VICTOR HUGO

The soul has illusions as the bird has wings: it is supported by them.
VICTOR HUGO

What would be ugly in a garden constitutes beauty in a mountain.
VICTOR HUGO

To love beauty is to see light.
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...
VICTOR HUGO

It is by suffering that human beings become angels.
VICTOR HUGO

Dear God! how beauty varies in nature and art. In a woman the flesh must be like marble; in a statue...
VICTOR HUGO

The most powerful symptom of love is a tenderness which becomes at times almost insupportable.
VICTOR HUGO

To love is to act.
VICTOR HUGO

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

Concision in style, precision in thought, decision in life.
VICTOR HUGO

He, who every morning plans the transactions of the day, and follows that plan, carries a thread tha...
VICTOR HUGO

Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.
VICTOR HUGO

Puns are the droppings of soaring wits.
VICTOR HUGO

Reaction - a boat which is going against the current but which does not prevent the river from flowi...
VICTOR HUGO

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

There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than th...
VICTOR HUGO

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

Ils tombèrent dans cette redoutable erreur de prendre l'obéissance du soldat pour le consentement ...
VICTOR HUGO

Those who live are those who fight.
VICTOR HUGO

Life is a flower of which love is the honey.
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...
VICTOR HUGO

To love another person is to see the face of God. Les Miserables
VICTOR HUGO

The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather,...
VICTOR HUGO

The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved.
VICTOR HUGO

Then press my lips, where plays a flame of bliss,-- A pure and holy love-light,--and forsake T...
VICTOR HUGO

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

Death belongs to God alone. By what right do men touch that unknown thing?
VICTOR HUGO

The greatest happiness of life it the conviction that we are loved - loved for ourselves, or rather,...
VICTOR HUGO

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

God manifests himself to us in the first degree through the life of the universe, and in the second ...
VICTOR HUGO

Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent
VICTOR HUGO

Reason is intelligence taking exercise. Imagination is intelligence with an erection.
VICTOR HUGO

Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.
VICTOR HUGO

An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise.
VICTOR HUGO

What Is Love? I have met in the streets a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his ...
VICTOR HUGO

Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul...
VICTOR HUGO

A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.
VICTOR HUGO

A man without a woman is like a pistol without a trigger; it is the woman who makes the man go off.
VICTOR HUGO

A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in--what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and...
VICTOR HUGO

Release is not the same as liberation. You get out of jail, all right, but you never stop being cond...
VICTOR HUGO

Nothing is more imminent than the impossible . . . what we must always foresee is the unforeseen.
VICTOR HUGO

There is nothing like a dream to create the future.
VICTOR HUGO

Melancholy is the happiness of being sad.
VICTOR HUGO

God created the flirt as soon as he made the fool.
VICTOR HUGO

Music expresses that which can not be said and on which it is impossible to be silent
VICTOR HUGO

The greatest blunders, like the thickest ropes, are often compounded of a multitude of strands.
VICTOR HUGO

Do not ask the name of the person who seeks a bed for the night. He who is reluctant to give his nam...
VICTOR HUGO

Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the grander view?
VICTOR HUGO

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

When a woman is speaking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes.
VICTOR HUGO

A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is invisible l...
VICTOR HUGO

To rescue from oblivion even a fragment of a language which men have used and which is in danger of ...
VICTOR HUGO

Nothing can be more depressing than to expose, naked to the light of thought, the hideous growth of ...
VICTOR HUGO

From the oyster to the eagle, from the swine to the tiger, all animals are to be found in men and ea...
VICTOR HUGO

Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.
VICTOR HUGO

Loving is half of believing.
VICTOR HUGO

Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause.
VICTOR HUGO

Have courage for the great sorrows of life, and patience for the small ones. When you have laborious...
VICTOR HUGO

There are obstinate and unknown braves who defend themselves inch by inch in the shadows against the...
VICTOR HUGO

Be like the bird who, halting in his flight on a limb too slight, yet sings, knowing he has wings.
VICTOR HUGO

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

There is no more sovereign eloquence than the truth in indignation.
VICTOR HUGO

As the purse is emptied, the heart is filled.
VICTOR HUGO

There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has com...
VICTOR HUGO

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

A stand can be made against invasion by an army; no stand can be made against invasion by an idea.
VICTOR HUGO

It is not enough for us to prostrate ourselves under the tree which is Creation, and to contemplate ...
VICTOR HUGO

In each age men of genius undertake the ascent. From below, the world follows them with their eyes. ...
VICTOR HUGO

What are the convulsions of a city in comparison with the insurrections of the soul? Man is a depth ...
VICTOR HUGO

A creditor is worse than a slave-owner; for the master owns only your person, but a creditor owns yo...
VICTOR HUGO

I'd rather be hissed at for a good verse, than applauded for a bad one.
VICTOR HUGO

Life, misfortunes, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are battlefields which have their heroes; obscur...
VICTOR HUGO

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

Mankind is not a circle with a single center but an ellipse with two focal points of which facts are...
VICTOR HUGO

One cannot be a good historian of the outward, visible world without giving some thought to the hidd...
VICTOR HUGO

For prying into any human affairs, non are equal to those whom it does not concern.
VICTOR HUGO

We are the children of our own deeds.
VICTOR HUGO

There are fathers who do not love their children, but there is no grandfather who does not adore his...
VICTOR HUGO

Genius is a promontory jutting out into the infinite.
VICTOR HUGO

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your...
VICTOR HUGO

Liberation is not deliverance.
VICTOR HUGO

A saint addicted to excessive self-abnegation is a dangerous associate; he may infect you with pover...
VICTOR HUGO

Superstition, bigotry and prejudice, ghosts though they are, cling tenaciously to life; they are sha...
VICTOR HUGO

The book which the reader now holds in his hands, from one end to the other, as a whole and in its d...
VICTOR HUGO

Popularity? It's glory's small change.
VICTOR HUGO

Such is the remorseless progression of human society, shedding lives and souls as it goes on its way...
VICTOR HUGO

A library implies an act of faith.
VICTOR HUGO

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

In this world, which is so plainly the antechamber of another, there are no happy men. The true divi...
VICTOR HUGO

Whenever we encounter the Infinite in man, however imperfectly understood, we treat it with respect....
VICTOR HUGO

There exists, at the bottom of all abasement and misfortune, a last extreme which rebels and joins b...
VICTOR HUGO

If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the si...
VICTOR HUGO

Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of...
VICTOR HUGO

Let us have compassion for those under chastisement. Alas, who are we ourselves? Who am I and who ar...
VICTOR HUGO

We say that slavery has vanished from European civilization, but this is not true. Slavery still exi...
VICTOR HUGO

Prometheus is action. Hamlet is hesitation. In Prometheus the obstacle is exterior; in Hamlet it is ...
VICTOR HUGO

Separated lovers cheat absence by a thousand fancies which have their own reality. They are prevente...
VICTOR HUGO

Most commonly revolt is born of material circumstances; but insurrection is always a moral phenomeno...
VICTOR HUGO

The brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over we realize this: that the hum...
VICTOR HUGO

He does not weep who does not see.
VICTOR HUGO

Progress is the life-style of man. The general life of the human race is called Progress, and so is ...
VICTOR HUGO

Progress is man's mode of existence. The general life of the human race is called Progress, the coll...
VICTOR HUGO

No one ever keeps a secret so well as a child.
VICTOR HUGO

The convent, which belongs to the West as it does to the East, to antiquity as it does to the presen...
VICTOR HUGO

We are on the side of religion as opposed to religions, and we are among those who believe in the wr...
VICTOR HUGO

Toleration is the best religion.
VICTOR HUGO

I was always a lover of soft-winged things.
VICTOR HUGO

A little girl without a doll is almost as unfortunate and quite as impossible as a woman without chi...
VICTOR HUGO

Popularity is glory's small change.
VICTOR HUGO

For sight is woman-like and shuns the old. (Ah! he can see enough, when years are told, Who b...
VICTOR HUGO

Melancholy is the pleasure of being sad
VICTOR HUGO

The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.
VICTOR HUGO

For, to make deserts, God, who rules mankind, Begins with kings, and ends the work by wind.
VICTOR HUGO

King of the peak and glacier, King of the cold, white scalps, He lifts his head at that close ...
VICTOR HUGO

To reform a man, you must begin with his grandmother.
VICTOR HUGO

The greatest happiness of life it the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather...
VICTOR HUGO

A compliment is like a kiss through a veil.
VICTOR HUGO

The clouds,--the only birds that never sleep.
VICTOR HUGO

You have suffered greatly, poor mother. Oh! do not lament, you have now the portion of the elect. It...
VICTOR HUGO

A library implies an act of faith
VICTOR HUGO

Life is the flower for which love is the honey.
VICTOR HUGO

Caution is the eldest child of wisdom
VICTOR HUGO

There is no such thing as a little country. The greatness of a people is no more determined by their...
VICTOR HUGO

The reduction of the universe to a single being, the expansion of a single being even to God, this i...
VICTOR HUGO

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

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

Society is a republic. When an individual tries to lift themselves above others, they are dragged do...
VICTOR HUGO

The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real that we exist...
VICTOR HUGO

And the dream that our mind had sketched in haste Shall others continue, but never complete. F...
VICTOR HUGO

A society that admits misery, a humanity that admits war, seem to me an inferior society and a debas...
VICTOR HUGO

Son, brother, father, lover, friend. There is room in the heart for all the affections, as there is ...
VICTOR HUGO

There are fathers who do not love their children; there is no grandfather who does not adore his gra...
VICTOR HUGO

The wicked envy and hate; it is their way of admiring.
VICTOR HUGO

Amnesty is as good for those who give it as for those who receive it. It has the admirable quality o...
VICTOR HUGO

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

Our life dreams the Utopia. Our death achieves the Ideal.
VICTOR HUGO

Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have labori...
VICTOR HUGO

Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant.
VICTOR HUGO

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

How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts...
VICTOR HUGO

Whenever a man's friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they t...
VICTOR HUGO

What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past.
VICTOR HUGO

The drama is complete poetry. The ode and the epic contain it only in germ; it contains both of them...
VICTOR HUGO

When a woman is talking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes.
VICTOR HUGO

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

Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age.
VICTOR HUGO

Curiosity is one of the forms of feminine bravery.
VICTOR HUGO

To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer ...
VICTOR HUGO

Initiative is doing the right thing without being told.
VICTOR HUGO

Nations, like stars, are entitled to eclipse. All is well, provided the light returns and the eclips...
VICTOR HUGO

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

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
VICTOR HUGO

The mountains, the forest, and the sea, render men savage; they develop the fierce, but yet do not d...
VICTOR HUGO

Victor Hugo

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