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VICTOR HUGO QUOTES

Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats.

VICTOR HUGO, Villemain

There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.

VICTOR HUGO, Les Misérables

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, The Hunchback of Notre Dame

An army is a strange composite masterpiece, which strength results from an enormous sum total of utter weaknesses. Thus only can we explain a war waged by humanity against humanity in spite of humanity.

VICTOR HUGO, Les Misérables

Nothing is so stifling as symmetry. Symmetry is boredom, the quintessence of mourning. Despair yawns. There is something more terrible than a hell of suffering -- a hell of boredom.

VICTOR HUGO, Les Misérables

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, Les Misérables

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

VICTOR HUGO, Histoire d'un crime

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

VICTOR HUGO, Intellectual Autobiography

Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved.

VICTOR HUGO, Les Misérables

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

VICTOR HUGO, Les Misérables

In every cradle decked with rosy wreath
Lurk germs of death.

VICTOR HUGO, "Hope"

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.

VICTOR HUGO, The Hunchback of Notre Dame

God has set his intentions in the flowers, in the dawn, in the spring--it is his will that we should love.

VICTOR HUGO, Toilers of the Sea

Like our dawn, merely a sob of light.

VICTOR HUGO, La Legende des Siécles

Sleep is in contact with the Possible, which we also call the improbable. The world of the night is a world. Night, as night, is a universe.... The dark things of the unknown world become neighbors of man, whether by true communication or by a visionary enlargement of the distances of the abyss ... and the sleeper, not quite seeing, not quite unconscious, glimpses the strange anomalities, weird vegetation, terrible or radiant pallors, ghosts, masks, figures, hydras, confusions, moonless moonlights, obscure unmakings of miracle, growths and vanishings within a murky depth, shapes floating in shadow, the whole mystery which we call Dreaming, and which is nothing other than the approach of an invisible reality. The dream is the aquarium of Night.

VICTOR HUGO, Travailleurs de la Mer

Do not economize on the hymeneal rites; do not prune them of their splendor, nor split farthings on the day when you are radiant. A wedding is not house-keeping.

VICTOR HUGO, Les Miserables

You say "society must exact vengeance, and society must punish." Wrong on both counts. Vengeance comes from the individual and punishment from God.

VICTOR HUGO, The Last Day of a Condemned Man

Life is a theatre set in which there are but few practicable entrances.

VICTOR HUGO, Les Misérables

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

VICTOR HUGO, Les Misérables

Men are still men. The despot's wickedness
Comes of ill teaching, and of power's excess--
Comes of the purple he from childhood wears,
Slaves would be tyrants if the chance were theirs.

VICTOR HUGO, The Vanished City

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

VICTOR HUGO, Eviradnus

If people did not love one another, I really don't see what use there would be in having any spring.

VICTOR HUGO, Les Misérables

All the human and animal manure which the world wastes, if returned to the land, instead of being thrown into the sea, would suffice to nourish the world.

VICTOR HUGO, Les Misérables

You may doubt I found comfort in England
But, there, 'tis a refuge from dangers!
Where a Cromwell dictated to Milton,
Republicans ne'er can be strangers!

VICTOR HUGO, "The Refugee's Haven", Poems

Much better an intelligent hell than a stupid paradise.

VICTOR HUGO, Ninety-Three

To study in Paris is to be born in Paris!

VICTOR HUGO, Les Misérables

Popularity? It's glory's small change.

VICTOR HUGO, attributed, The Concise Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

Above all, you can believe in Providence in either of two ways, either as thirst believes in the orange, or as the ass believes in the whip.

VICTOR HUGO, The Man Who Laughs

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

VICTOR HUGO, Intellectual Autobiography: Ideas on Literature, Philosophy and Religion

Progress is the stride of God.

VICTOR HUGO, attributed, Day's Collacon

The poet invites inspiration by meditation, as the prophets raised themselves to ecstasies by prayer.

VICTOR HUGO, "Scraps of Philosophy and Criticism", The New-England Magazine, September 9, 1835

From a political point of view, there is but one principle, the sovereignty of man over himself. This sovereignty of myself over myself is called Liberty.

VICTOR HUGO, Les Miserables

Victory Hugo - an essay by John Cowper Powys

Victor Hugo - a biography..

Victor Hugo - an analysis of his dramatic works.

Victor Hugo Bibliography - a list of his works.

Victor Hugo Monologues - a collection of monologues from Hugo's works.

Victor Hugo Poems - a collection of his poetry.


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