Victor Hugo Quotes - Page 25

• The women laughed and wept; the crowd stamped their feet enthusiastically, for at that moment Quasimodo was really beautiful. He was handsome — this orphan, this foundling, this outcast.

  Victor Hugo

  Beautiful, Feet, Crowds

  8 Copy quote

• Tobacco is the plant that converts thoughts into dreams.

  Victor Hugo

  Dream, Plant, Tobacco

  12 Copy quote

• Let the one fight for his flag, and the other for his ideal, and let them both imagine that they are fighting for the country; the strife will be colossal.

  Victor Hugo

  Country, Fighting, Flags

  Victor Hugo (2000). “Les Mis??rables”, p.1077, Modern Library

  9 Copy quote

• Kings are for nations in their swaddling-clothes: France has attained her majority.

  Victor Hugo

  Kings, Clothes, Majority

  10 Copy quote

• Homer is one of the men of genius who solve that fine problem of art - the finest of all, perhaps - truly to depict humanity by the enlargement of man: that is, to generate the real in the ideal.

  Victor Hugo

  Art, Real, Men

  Victor Hugo (2001). “William Shakespeare”, p.43, The Minerva Group, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

• No matter who you are, the thought of so much suffering and degradation must cause you to shudder at the sight of a veil or cassock, those two shrouds of human invention.

  Victor Hugo

  Sight, Two, Suffering

  Victor Hugo (1980). “Les misérables”, Viking Pr

  7 Copy quote

• I had a dream my life would be different from this hell I am living, so different from what it seemed. Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.

  Victor Hugo

  Life, Dream, Different

  52 Copy quote

• Liberation is not deliverance.

  Victor Hugo

  Wisdom, Freedom, Liberty

  Victor Hugo (2016). “Les Misérables”, p.121, My Ebook Publishing House

  17 Copy quote

• Strong and rare natures are thus created; misery, almost always a stepmother, is sometimes a mother; privation gives birth to power of soul and mind; distress is the nurse of self-respect; misfortune is a good breast for great souls.

  Victor Hugo

  Mother, Strong, Self

  Victor Hugo (1862). “Marius”, p.68

  7 Copy quote

• I like the laughter that opens the lips and the heart, shows at the same time the pearls and the soul.

  Victor Hugo

  Laughter, Heart, Soul

  11 Copy quote

• We may remark in passing that to be blind and beloved may, in this world where nothing is perfect, be among the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness. The supreme happiness in life is the assurance of being loved; of being loved for oneself, even in spite of oneself; and this assurance the blind man possesses. In his affliction, to be served is to be caressed. Does he lack anything? no. Possessing love he is not deprived of light. A love, moreover, that is wholly pure. There can be no blindness where there is this certainty.

  Victor Hugo

  Life, Men, Light

  12 Copy quote

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

  Victor Hugo

  Wisdom, Doe

  6 Copy quote

• If the infinite had no me, then me would be its limit. It would not be the infinite, therefore it would not be.

  Victor Hugo

  Limits, Would Be, Infinite

  8 Copy quote

• Equality does not mean that all plants must grow to the same height - a society of tall grass and dwarf trees, a jostle of conflicting jealousies. It means, in civic terms, an equal outlet for all talents; in political terms, that all votes will carry the same weight; and in religious terms that all beliefs will enjoy equal rights.

  Victor Hugo

  Religious, Mean, Dwarves

  7 Copy quote

• Yes, instruction! Light! Light! Everything comes from light, and to everything it returns.

  Victor Hugo

  Light, Return, Instruction

  Victor Hugo (2016). “Les Miserables”, p.1493, Xist Publishing

  7 Copy quote

• Music is the vapor of art. It is to poetry what reverie is to thought, what fluid is to solid, what the ocean of clouds is to the ocean of waves.

  Victor Hugo

  Music, Art, Ocean

  4 Copy quote

• One cannot be a good historian of the outward, visible world without giving some thought to the hidden, private life of ordinary people; and on the other hand one cannot be a good historian of this inner life without taking into account outward events where these are relevant.

  Victor Hugo

  Hands, Order, Two

  "Les misérables".

  8 Copy quote

• The Parisian is to the French what the Athenian was to the Greeks: no one sleeps better than he, no one is more openly frivolous and idle, no one appears more heedless. But this is misleading. He is given to every kind of listlessness, but when there is glory to be won he may be inspired with every kind of fury. Give him a pike and he will enact the tenth of August, a musket and you have Austerlitz. He was the springboard of Napoleon and the mainstay of Danton. At the cry of "la patrie" he enrols, and at the call of liberty he tears up the pavements. Beware of him!

  Victor Hugo

  Sleep, August, Paris

  Victor Hugo (1980). “Les misérables”, Viking Pr

  9 Copy quote

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

  Victor Hugo

  Darkness, Guilt, Les Mis

  Victor Hugo (1862). “Les Misérables: Fantine”, p.14, Library of Alexandria

  10 Copy quote

• Justice has its anger, my lord Bishop, and the wrath of justice is an element of progress. Whatever else may be said of it, the French Revolution was the greatest step forward by mankind since the coming of Christ. It was unfinished, I agree, but still it was sublime. It released the untapped springs of society; it softened hearts, appeased, tranquilized, enlightened, and set flowing through the world the tides of civilization. It was good. The French Revolution was the anointing of humanity.

  Victor Hugo

  Spring, Heart, Civilization

  Victor Hugo (1980). “Les misérables”, Viking Pr

  64 Copy quote

• Every good quality runs into a defect; economy borders on avarice, the generous are not far from the prodigal, the brave man is close to the bully; he who is very pious is slightly sanctimonious; there are just as many vices to virtue as there are holes in the mantle of Diogenes.

  Victor Hugo

  Running, Men, Bully

  Victor Hugo (2000). “Les Mis??rables”, p.577, Modern Library

  21 Copy quote

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

  Victor Hugo

  Wisdom, Real, Drama

  Victor Hugo (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Victor Hugo (Illustrated)”, p.12468, Delphi Classics

  44 Copy quote

• She might have melted a heart of stone, but nothing can melt a heart of wood.

  Victor Hugo

  Heart, Stones, Might

  Victor Hugo (1980). “Les misérables”, Viking Pr

  8 Copy quote

• A bird sings, a child prattles, but it is the same hymn; hymn indistinct, inarticulate, but full of profound meaning.

  Victor Hugo

  Children, Hymns, Profound

  Victor Hugo, Frank Lee Benedict (1874). “Ninety-three”, p.238, Dawson Bros.

  8 Copy quote

• In this way, his unhappy soul struggled with its anguish. Eighteen hundred years before this unfortunate man, the mysterious Being, in whom all the sanctities and all the sufferings of humanity come together, He too, while the olive trees trembled in the fierce breath of the Infinite, had brushed away the fearful cup that appeared before him, streaming with shadow and running over with darkness, in the star-filled depths. (pg. 236)

  Victor Hugo

  Running, Stars, Men

  7 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

Alexandre Dumas

Albert Camus

Emile Zola

Honore de Balzac

Charles Baudelaire

Jules Verne

Juliette Drouet

Gustave Flaubert