Victor Hugo Quotes - Page 11

• Victor Hugo / Poet

Every step which the intelligence of Europe has taken has been in spite of the clerical party.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

Sire, you are looking at a plain man, and I am looking at a great man. Each of us may benefit.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

Love is like a tree, it grows of its own accord, it puts down deep roots into our whole being.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

The great acts of love are done by those who are habitually performing small acts of kindness.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

We are not loved by our friends for what we are; rather, we are loved in spite of what we are.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

Nature, like a kind and smiling mother, lends herself to our dreams and cherishes our fancies.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

There are plenty who regard a wall behind which something is happening as a very curious thing.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

Mirrors, those revealers of the truth, are hated; that does not prevent them from being of use.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

His whole life was now summed up in two words: absolute uncertainty within an impenetrable fog.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

The beautiful is as useful as the useful." He added after a moment’s silence, "Perhaps more so.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

Daring is the price of progress. All splendid conquests are the prize of boldness, more or less.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

A few feet under the ground reigns so profound a silence, and yet so much tumult on the surface!

• Victor Hugo / Poet

There are no rules, no models; rather, there are no rules other than the general laws of Nature.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

A one-eyed man is much more incomplete than a blind man, for he knows what it is that's lacking.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

Let us study things that are no more. It is necessary to understand them, if only to avoid them.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

She had had sweet dreams, which possibly arose from the fact that her little bed was very white.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

The miserable's name is Man; he is agonizing in all climes, and he is groaning in all languages.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

Nothing else in the world... not all the armies... is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

There are people who observe the rules of honor as one observes the stars, from a great distance.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

Table talk and Lovers' talk equally elude the grasp; Lovers' talk is clouds, table talk is smoke.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

Nothing is more imminent than the impossible . . . what we must always foresee is the unforeseen.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

Nothing can be sadder or more profound than to see a thousand things for the first and last time.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

A stand can be made against invasion by an army; no stand can be made against invasion by an idea.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

Here we stop. Upon the threshold of wedding nights stands an angel smiling, his finger on his lip.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

Diamonds are to be found only in the darkness of the earth, and truth in the darkness of the mind.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

To rise at six, to dine at ten, To sup at six, to sleep at ten, Makes a man live for ten times ten.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

Genuflection before the idol or the dollar destroys the muscles which walk and the will that moves.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

A man without a woman is like a pistol without a trigger; it is the woman who makes the man go off.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

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

• Victor Hugo / Poet

It is most pleasant to commit a just action which is disagreeable to someone whom one does not like.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

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

• Victor Hugo / Poet

There is a material advancement; we desire it. There is, also, a moral grandeur; we hold fast to it.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

When I speak to you about myself, I am speaking to you about yourself. How is it you don't see that?

• Victor Hugo / Poet

These are true felicities. No joy beyond these joys. Love is the only ecstasy, everything else weeps

• Victor Hugo / Poet

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

• Victor Hugo / Poet

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

• Victor Hugo / Poet

To rove about, musing, that is to say loitering, is, for a philosopher, a good way of spending time.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

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

• Victor Hugo / Poet

Philosophy is the microscope of thought. Everything desires to flee from it, but nothing escapes it.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

Nature has made a pebble and a female. The lapidary makes the diamond, and the lover makes the woman.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time as come.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

Philosophy should be an energy; it should find its aim and its effect in the amelioration of mankind.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

The tomb is not a blind alley: it is a thoroughfare. It closes on the twilight. It opens on the dawn.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

The most beautiful of altars, he said, is the soul of an unhappy creature consoled and thankfing God.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

Why worry about what threatens our heads or purses? Let us think instead of what threatens our souls.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

The soul helps the body, and at certain moments raises it. It is the only bird that sustains its cage.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

It is often necessary to know how to obey a woman in order sometimes to have the right to command her.

• Victor Hugo / Poet

Ma vie est une énigme dont ton nom est le mot. (My life is an enigma, of which your name is the word.)