Victor Hugo Quotes

What Is Love? I have met in the streets a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul

~ Victor Hugo

The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only.

~ Victor Hugo

Promise to give me a kiss on my brow when I am dead. --I shall feel it.She dropped her head again on Marius' knees, and her eyelids closed. He thought the poor soul had departed. Eponine remained motionless. All at once, at the very moment when Marius fancied her asleep forever, she slowly opened her eyes in which appeared the sombre profundity of death, and said to him in a tone whose sweetness seemed already to proceed from another world:--And by the way, Monsieur Marius, I believe that I was a little bit in love with you.

~ Victor Hugo

You who suffer because you love, love still more. To die of love, is to live by it.

~ Victor Hugo

When love has fused and mingled two beings in a sacred and angelic unity, the secret of life has been discovered so far as they are concerned; they are no longer anything more than the two boundaries of the same destiny; they are no longer anything but the two wings of the same spirit. Love, soar.

~ Victor Hugo

I have been loving you a little more every minute since this morning.

~ Victor Hugo

Marius and Cosette were in the dark in regard to each other. They did not speak, they did not bow, they were not acquainted; they saw each other; and, like the stars in the sky separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing upon each other.

~ Victor Hugo

Love is the only future God offers.

~ Victor Hugo

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

~ Victor Hugo

The straight line, a respectable optical illusion which ruins many a man.

~ Victor Hugo

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. God is awake.

~ Victor Hugo

Not being heard is no reason for silence.

~ Victor Hugo

Those who do not weep, do not see.

~ Victor Hugo

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

~ Victor Hugo

This first glance of a soul which does not yet know itself is like dawn in the heavens, it is the awakening of something radiant and unknown.

~ Victor Hugo

More powerful than the mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.

~ Victor Hugo

When the heart is dry the eye is dry.

~ Victor Hugo

where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and who can say which has the wider vision?

~ Victor Hugo

Sin is a gravitation.

~ Victor Hugo

It is not easy to keep silent when silence is a lie.

~ Victor Hugo

There are, as we know, powerful and illustrious atheists. At bottom, led back to the truth by their very force, they are not absolutely sure that they are atheists; it is with them only a question of definition, and in any case, if they do not believe in God, being great minds, they prove God.

~ Victor Hugo

Well, listen a moment, Monsieur Mayor; I have often been severe in my life towards others. It was just. I did right. Now if I were not severe towards myself, all I have justly done would become injustice. Should I spare myself more than others? No. What! if I should be prompt only to punish others and not myself, I should be a wretched indeed! - Javert to M. Madeleine

~ Victor Hugo

The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.

~ Victor Hugo

The poor man shuddered, overflowed with an angelic joy; he declared in his transport that this would last through life; he said to himself that he really had not suffered enough to deserve such radiant happiness, and he thanked God, in the depths of his soul, for having permitted that he, a miserable man, should be so loved by this innocent being.

~ Victor Hugo

He was there alone with himself, collected, tranquil, adoring, comparing the serenity of his heart with the serenity of the skies, moved in the darkness by the visible splendors of the constellations, and the invisible splendor of God, opening his soul to the thoughts which fall from the Unknown. In such moments, offering up his heart at the hour when the flowers of night inhale their perfume, lighted like a lamp in the center of the starry night, expanding his soul in ecstasy in the midst of the universal radiance of creation, he could not himself perhaps have told what was passing in his own mind; he felt something depart from him, and something descend upon him, mysterious interchanges of the depths of the soul with the depths of the universe.

~ Victor Hugo

Do not forget, do not ever forget, that you have promised me to use the money to make yourself an honest man.'Valjean, who did not recall having made any promise, was silent. The bishop had spoken the words slowly and deliberately. He concluded with a solemn emphasis:Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to what is evil but to what is good. I have bought your soul to save it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God.

~ Victor Hugo

A cannonball travels only two thousand miles an hour, light travels two hundred thousand miles a second. Such is the superiority of Jesus Christ over Napoleon.

~ Victor Hugo

Does there exist an Infinity outside ourselves? Is that infinity One, immanent and permanent, necessarily having substance, since He is infinite and if He lacked matter He would be limited, necessarily possessing intelligence since He is infinite and, lacking intelligence, He would be in that sense finite. Does this Infinity inspire in us the idea of essense, while to ourselves we can only attribute the idea of existence? In order words, is He not the whole of which we are but the part?

~ Victor Hugo

...Nobody knows like a woman how to say things that are both sweet and profound. Sweetness and depth, this is all of woman; this is Heaven.

~ Victor Hugo

Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over, this is recognised: that the human race has been harshly treated, but that it has advanced.

~ Victor Hugo

A library implies an act of faith which generations, still in darkness hid, sign in their night in witness of the dawn. (1872)

~ Victor Hugo

Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing.

~ Victor Hugo

As for methods of prayer, all are good, as long as they are sincere.

~ Victor Hugo

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

~ Victor Hugo

Be happy without picking flaws.

~ Victor Hugo

Every day has its great grief or its small anxiety. ... One cloud is dispelled, another forms. There is hardly one day in a hundred of real joy and bright sunshine.

~ Victor Hugo

Are you what is called a lucky man? Well, you are sad every day. Each day has its great grief or its little care. Yesterday you were trembling for the health of one who is dear to you, today you fear for your own; tomorrow it will be an anxiety about money, the next day the slanders of a calumniator, the day after the misfortune of a friend; then the weather, then something broken or lost, then a pleasure for which you are reproached by your conscience or your vertebral column; another time, the course of public affairs. Not to mention heartaches. And so on. One cloud is dissipated, another gathers. Hardly one day in a hundred of unbroken joy and sunshine. And you are of that small number who are lucky! As for other men, stagnant night is upon them.

~ Victor Hugo

The supreme happiness of life consists in the conviction that one is loved, loved for one's own sake-let us say rather in spite of one's self.

~ Victor Hugo

In moments like these, offering up his heart at the hour that night flowers offer up their perfume, lit up like a lamp in the middle of the starry night, full of ecstasy in the middle of the universal radiance of creation, he could not perhaps have said himself what was happening in his spirit; he felt something soar up out of him and something fly down into him. Mysterious exchanges between the bottomless well of the soul and the bottomless well of the universe!

~ Victor Hugo

There is nothing like a dream to create the future.

~ Victor Hugo