Quotes By Victor Hugo

To rise from error to truth is rare and beautiful.

The man who does not know other languages, unless he is a man of genius, necessarily has deficiencies in his ideas.

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

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

I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses.

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

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

By putting forward the hands of the clock you shall not advance the hour.

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.

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.

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

Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.

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

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

Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace.

Nations, like stars, are entitled to eclipse. All is well, provided the light returns and the eclipse does not become endless night. Dawn and resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul.

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

I put a Phrygian cap on the old dictionary.

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

Stupidity talks, vanity acts.

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.

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.

One of the hardest tasks is to extract continually from one's soul an almost inexhaustible ill will.

Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.

A great artist is a great man in a great child.

Life is the flower for which love is the honey.

How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said.

People do not lack strength; they lack will.

Mankind is not a circle with a single center but an ellipse with two focal points of which facts are one and ideas the other.

Hell is an outrage on humanity. When you tell me that your deity made you in his image, I reply that he must have been very ugly.