Quotes By 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.

When a man is out of sight, it is not too long before he is out of mind.

Reaction - a boat which is going against the current but which does not prevent the river from flowing on.

A mother's arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them.

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

One can resist the invasion of an army but one cannot resist the invasion of ideas.

A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.

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

A library implies an act of faith.

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.

Taste is the common sense of genius.

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

Virtue has a veil, vice a mask.

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

The flesh is the surface of the unknown.

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

It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.

What a grand thing, to be loved! What a grander thing still, to love!

Almost all our desires, when examined, contain something too shameful to reveal.

There are thoughts which are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the posture of the body, the soul is on its knees.

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

A creditor is worse than a slave-owner; for the master owns only your person, but a creditor owns your dignity, and can command it.

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

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

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.

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

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather in spite of ourselves.

Wisdom is a sacred communion.

Those who live are those who fight.

Blessed be Providence which has given to each his toy: the doll to the child, the child to the woman, the woman to the man, the man to the devil!