115 Quotes of Wisdom by Victor Hugo

Music expresses that which cannot be said, and which cannot be suppressed.William Shakespeare (1864), (A. C. McClurg & Co., ed. 1891), Part I, Book II, Chapter IV, Page 91

Laughter is sunshine; it chases winter from the human face.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume II, Book VIII, Chapter IX, Page 481

He slipped, climbed, rolled, searched, walked, persevered, – that is all; that, indeed, is the secret of all triumphs.The Man Who Laughs (1869), (Estes and Lauriat, ed. 1869), Volume I, Part I, Book III, Chapter I, Page 159

There are fathers who do not love their children; there is no grandfather who does not adore his grandson.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume III, Book V, Chapter III, Page 577

What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past.The Man Who Laughs (1869), (Estes and Lauriat, ed. 1869), Volume II, Part II, Book VIII, Chapter III, Page 269

Peace is the virtue of civilization. War is its crime.On the one hundredth anniversary of Voltaire's death (1878)

Those who live are those who fight.The Castigations (1853

An intelligent hell would be preferable to an imbruted heaven.Ninety-Three (1874), (Harper & brothers, ed. 1874), Part III, Book VI, Chapter V, Page 348

Let us leave to the brain that which belongs to it, and agree that the productions of genius are a superhuman offspring of man.William Shakespeare (1864), (A. C. McClurg & Co., ed. 1891), Part I, Book II, Chapter I, Page 40

A genius is a headland into the infinite.William Shakespeare (1864), (A. C. McClurg & Co., ed. 1891), Part II, Book II, Chapter V, Page 240

The fashions have in fact done more mischief than revolutions.The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831), (ed. 1833), Book III, Chapter I, Page 101

No one ever keeps a secret so well as a child.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume II, Book VIII, Chapter VIII, Page 476

Wisdom is a sacred communion.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume II, Book VII, Chapter VI, Page 439

A great artist is a great man in a great child.Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography (1907), Chapter XIII, Page 374

The flesh is the covering of the soul.The Man Who Laughs (1869), (Estes and Lauriat, ed. 1869), Volume II, Part II, Book III, Chpater IX, Page 60

You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea.Things Seen (1887), Villemain (December 7, 1845), Page 63

Indigestion is charged by God with enforcing morality on the stomach.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume I, Book III, Chapter VII, Page 114

Virtue has a veil, vice a mask.Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography (1907), Chapter XIII, Page 362

Conscience is God present in man.Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography (1907), Chapter XIII, Page 391

The grandest productions of architecture are not so much individual as social works, rather the offspring of nations in labour than the inventions of genius.The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831), (ed. 1833), Book III, Chapter I, Page 104

To be wicked does not insure prosperity — for the inn did not succeed well.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume I, Book IV, Chapter III, Page 13

We do not comprehend everything, but we insult nothing.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume II, Book VI, Chapter XI, Page 429

Almost all our desires, when closely examined, contain what we dare not avow.The Man Who Laughs (1869), (Estes and Lauriat, ed. 1869), Volume I, Part II, Book I, Chapter IX, Page 269

There is a way of meeting error while on the road of truth.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume III, Book III, Chapter VI, Page 536

Nothing is more dangerous than discontinued labour; it is habit lost. A habit easy to abandon, difficult to resume.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume IV, Book II, Chapter I, Page 725

When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right.Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography: (Postscriptum de Ma Vie) (1907)

The wind of revolutions is not tractable.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume IV, Book X, 1832, Chapter IV, Page 898

I only take a half share in the civil war; I am willing to die, I am not willing to kill.History of a Crime (1877), (ed. 1900), Part IV, Chapter II, Page 310

To set all in equilibrium, it is well; to put all in harmony is better.Ninety-Three (1874), (Harper & Brothers, ed. 1874), Part III, Book VI, Chapter V, Page 344

Memory is a gulf that a word can move to its lowest depths.The Man Who Laughs (1869), (Estes and Lauriat, ed. 1869), Volume II, Part II, Book V, Chapter IV, Page 148

A faith is a necessity to man, Woe to him who believes nothing.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume II, Book VII, Chapter VIII, Page 440

Initiative is doing the right thing without being told.Wise Words from Victor Hugo by Richard Cameron

Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats.Things Seen (Choses vues) (1887), Villemain (December 7, 1845), Page 63

Pain is as diverse as man. One suffers as one can.Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography (1907), Chapter XIII, Page 357

What makes night within a man may leave stars.Ninety-Three (1874), (Harper & Brothers, ed. 1874), Part II, Book I, Chapter II, Page 97

Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.Wise Words from Victor Hugo by Richard Cameron

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.The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831), (Little, Brown & Co., ed. 1888), Book III, Chapter II, Page 197

Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume IV, Book XII, Chapter IV, Page 927

The paradise of the rich is made out of the hell of the poor.The Man Who Laughs (1869), (Estes and Lauriat, ed. 1869), Volume I, Part II, Book II, Chapter XI, Page 352

Taste is the common sense of genius.Victor Hugo: Dramas (ed. 1896), Volume IV, Oliver Cromwell (1827), Preface, Page 39

A reaction: a boat which is going against the current but which does not prevent the river from flowing on.Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography (1907), Chapter XIII, Page 384

Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant.Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography (1907), Chapter XIII, Page 352

The ode lives upon the ideal, the epic upon the grandiose, the drama upon the real.Victor Hugo: Dramas (ed. 1896), Volume IV, Oliver Cromwell (1827), Preface, Page 18

Nothing makes a man so adventurous as an empty pocket.The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831), (ed. 1833), Book II, Chapter VI, Page 71

There is nothing like a dream to create the future.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume III, Book IV, Chapter I, Page 547

The reduction of the universe to a single being, the expansion of a single being even to God, this is love.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume IV, Book V, Chapter IV, Page 784

The first symptom of true love in a young man is timidity; in a young girl it is boldness.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume IV, Book III, Chapter VI, Page 756

What a grand thing, to be loved? What a grander thing still, to love?Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume IV, Book V, Chapter IV, Page 787

Love each other dearly always. There is scarcely anything else in the world but that: to love one another.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume V, Book IX, Chapter V, Page 1221

Love is like a tree: it shoots of itself; it strikes its roots deeply into our whole being, and frequently continues to be green over a heart in ruins. And there is this unaccountable circumstance attending it, that the blinder the passion the more tenacious it is. Never is it stronger than when it is most unreasonable.The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831), (ed. 1833), Book VIII, Chapter IV, Page 331

To love is to act.Last words of his diary, Complete Writings (1970)

When God desires to destroy a thing, he entrusts its destruction to the thing itself. Every bad institution of this world ends by suicide.Napoleon the Little (1852), (Little, Brown & Co., ed. 1909), Book VIII, Chapter VII, Page 292

The word which the finger of God has nevertheless written upon the brow of every man – Hope!Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume I, Book II, Chapter VII, Page 77

For the word is the Verb, and the Verb is God.The Contemplations (1856), Part I, Chapter VIII

We are for religion against the religions.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume II, Book VII, Chapter VIII, Page 441

God manifests his will in the flowers, in the light of dawn, in the spring; and love is of his ordaining.Toilers of the Sea (1866), (ed. 1877), Part III, Book I, Chapter II, Page 333

Vengeance comes from the individual and punishment from God.The Last Day of a Condemned Man (1829), (Oxford, ed. 1992), Page 25

Toleration is the best religion.Pearls of Thought by Maturin Murray Ballou (1881), Page 262

Religions do a useful thing: they narrow God to the limits of man. Philosophy replies by doing a necessary thing: it elevates man to the plane of God.Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography (1907), Chapter XIII, Page 287

God manifests himself to us in the first degree through the life of the universe, and in the second through the thought of man. The second manifestation is not less holy than the first. The first is named Nature, the second is named Art.William Shakespeare (1864), (A. C. McClurg & Co., ed. 1891), Part I, Book II, Chapter I, Page 36

Curiosity is one of the forms of feminine bravery.Ninety-Three (1874), (Harper & Brothers, ed. 1874), Part I, Book I, Page 9

Nobody knows like a woman how to say things at the same time sweet and profound.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume IV, Book VIII, Chapter I, Page 848

It is said that slavery has disappeared from European civilisation. This is a mistake. It still exists: but it weighs now only upon woman, and it is called prostitution.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume I, Book V, Chapter XI, Page 157

Without vanity, without coquetry, without curiosity, in a word, without the fall, woman would not be woman. Much of her grace is in her frailty.Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography (1907), Chapter XIII, Page 398

When a woman is speaking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes.Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography (1907), Chapter XIII, Page 399

Thought is the labour of the intellect, reverie is its pleasure.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume IV, Book II, Chapter I, Page 726

To meditate is to labour; to think is to act.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume II, Book VII, Chapter VIII, Page 440

A man is not idle, because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labour and there is an invisible labour.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume II, Book VII, Chapter VIII, Page 440

Those who pray always are necessary to those who never pray. In our view, the whole question is in the amount of thought that is mingled with prayer.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume II, Book VII, Chapter VIII, Page 441

We should judge a man much more surely from what he dreams than from what he thinks.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume III, Book V, Chapter V, Page 585

There are many tongues to talk, and but few heads to think.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume I, Book I, Chapter I, Page 4

We are given up to those gods, those monsters, those giants: our thoughts.Ninety-Three (1874), (Harper & Brothers, ed. 1874), Part III, Book V, Chapter II, Page 317

He who is not master of his own thoughts is not accountable for his own deeds.The Man Who Laughs (1869), (Estes and Lauriat, ed. 1869), Volume I, Part II, Book I, Chapter VIII, Page 261

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.William Shakespeare (1864), (A. C. McClurg & Co., ed. 1891), Part II, Book V, Chapter II, Page 295

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.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume I, Book VII, Chapter III, Page 184

Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume IV, Book V, Chapter IV, Page 785

One of the hardest labours of the just man is to expunge malevolence from his soul.The Man Who Laughs (1869), (Estes and Lauriat, ed. 1869), Volume I, Part II, Book I, Chapter IX, Page 269

I am not in the world to care for my life, but for souls.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume I, Book I, Chapter VII, Page 24

Our life dreams the Utopia. Our death achieves the Ideal.Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography (1907), Chapter IX, Page 267

It is nothing to die; it is frightful not to live.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume V, Book IX, Chapter V, Page 1218

Life is the flower for which love is the honey.The King Amuses Himself (1832), Act II, Scene IV

Short as life is, we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time.Wise Words from Victor Hugo by Richard Cameron

Concision in style, precision in thought, decision in life.Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography (1907), Chapter XIII, Page 367

On this point, the priest and the philosopher agree: We must die.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume II, Book VII, Chapter VIII, Page 441

When we are at the end of life, to die means to go away; when we are at the beginning, to go away means to die.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume IV, Book VIII, Chapter VI, Page 860

Man is not a circle with a single centre; he is an ellipse with two focus. Facts are one, ideas are the other.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume IV, Book VII, Chapter I, Page 830

Men grow accustomed to poison by degrees.Toilers of the Sea (1866), (ed. 1877), Part I, Book IV, Chapter II, Page 69

A people, like a star, has the right of eclipse. And all is well, provided the light return and the eclipse do not degenerate into night. Dawn and resurrection are synonyms. The reappearance of the light is identical with the persistence of the Me.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume V, Book I, Chapter XX, Page 1041

The miserable’s name is Man; he is agonizing in all climes, and he is groaning in all languages.Letter to M. Daelli (October 18, 1862)

The wise man does not grow old, but ripens.Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography (1907), Chapter XIII, Page 386

Not seeing people permits us to imagine in them every perfection.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume III, Book III, Chapter VII, Page 538

People do not lack strength; they lack will.As quoted The Ohio Educational Monthly (1907)

Liberation is not deliverance.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume I, Book II, Chapter IX, Page 83

He who is not capable of enduring poverty is not capable of being free.Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography (1907), Chapter XIII, Page 357

From the political point of view, there is but one single principle: the sovereignty of man over himself. This sovereignty of myself over myself is called Liberty.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume V, Book I, Chapter V, Page 1000

The mountains, the forest, and the sea, render men savage; they develop the fierce, but yet do not destroy the human.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume I, Book II, Chapter VI, Page 72

Nature is pitiless; she never withdraws her flowers, her music, her joyousness, and her sunlight from before human cruelty or suffering.Ninety-Three (1874), (Harper & Brothers, ed. 1874), Part III, Book VI, Chapter VI, Page 352

What would be ugly in a garden constitutes beauty in a mountain.Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography (1907), Chapter XIII, Page 373

To learn to read is to kindle a fire; every syllable spelled sparkles.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume IV, Book VII, Chapter I, Page 831

The animal is ignorant of the fact that he knows. The man is aware of the fact that he is ignorant.Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography (1907), Chapter XIII, Page 391

He who opens a school door closes a prison.Wise Words from Victor Hugo by Richard Cameron

The learned man knows that he is ignorant.Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography (1907), Chapter XIII, Page 360

Knowledge only increases one’s responsibility.The Man Who Laughs (1869), (Estes and Lauriat, ed. 1869), Volume I, Part I, Book II, Chapter XVIII, Page 149

An invasion of armies can be resisted; an invasion of ideas can not be resisted.History of a Crime (1877), (ed. 1900), Part V, Chapter X, Page 429

A day will come when there will be no battlefields, but markets opening to commerce and minds opening to ideas.Actes et paroles - Avant l'exil (1875)

There are many great deeds done in the small struggles of life.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume III, Book V, Chapter I, Page 573

One can no more prevent the mind from returning to an idea than the sea from returning to a shore. In the case of the sailor, this is called the tide; in the case of the guilty, it is called remorse.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume I, Book VII, Chapter III, Page 189

Our acts make or mar us, we are the children of our own deeds.Treasury of Thought by Maturin Murray Ballou (1884)

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves – say rather, loved in spite of ourselves; this conviction the blind have.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume I, Book V, Chapter IV, Page 140

To be perfectly happy it does not suffice to possess happiness, it is necessary to have deserved it.Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography (1907), Chapter XIII, Page 361

To love beauty is to see light.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume V, Book I, Chapter XX, Page 1040

The beautiful has but one type, the ugly has a thousand.Victor Hugo: Dramas (ed. 1896), Volume IV, Oliver Cromwell (1827), Preface, Page 16

Nothing stifles one like this perpetual symmetry. Symmetry is ennui, and ennui is the very essence of grief and melancholy. Despair yawns. Something more terrible than a hell of suffering may be conceived; to wit, a hell of ennui.Les misérables (1862), (The Modern Library, ed. 1862), Volume II, Book IV, Chapter I, Page 367

Idleness is the heaviest of all oppressions.Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography (1907), Chapter XIII, Page 360

Doing nothing is happiness for children and misery for old men.Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography(1907), Chapter XIII, Page 361