Victor Hugo Quotes

“She worked in order to live, and presently fell in love, also in order to live, for the heart, too, has its hunger.”

“Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.”

“Joie est mon caractere, C'est la faute a Voltaire; Misere est mon trousseau C'est la faute a Rousseau. [Joy is my character, 'Tis the fault of Voltaire; Misery is my trousseau 'Tis the fault of Rousseau.] - Gavroche”

“They say love is blindness of heart; I say not to love is blindness.”

“The ox suffers, the cart complains.”

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

“For sight is woman-like and shuns the old.”

“A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.”

“Ah," cried Gavroche, "what does this mean? It rains again! ...If this continues, I withdraw my subscription.”

“There comes an hour when protest no longer suffices; after philosophy there must be action; the strong hand finishes what the idea has sketched.”

“I exist," murmurs someone whose name is Everyone. "I'm young and in love; I am old and I want rest; I work, I prosper, I do good business, I have houses to rent, money in State Securities; I am happy, I have wife and children; I like all these things and I want to go on living, so leave me alone."... There are moments when all this casts a deep chill on the large-minded pioneers of the human race.”

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

“Reason is intelligence taking exercise. Imagination is intelligence with an erection.”

“Never laugh at those who suffer; suffer sometimes those who laugh.”

“To rescue from oblivion even a fragment of a language which men have used and which is in danger of being lost -that is to say, one of the elements, whether good or bad, which have shaped and complicated civilization -is to extend the scope of social observation and to serve civilization.”

“Our acts make or mar us, we are the children of our own deeds.”

“If nobody loved, the sun would go out.”

“There is but one way of refusing To-morrow, that is to die.”

“All the human and animal manure which the world wastes, if returned to the land, instead of being thrown into the sea, would suffice to nourish the world.”

“There is something more terrible than a hell of suffering--a hell of boredom.”

“It is those books which a man possesses but does not read which constitute the most suspicious evidence against him.”

“Art needs no spur beyond itself.”

“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.”

“The drama is complete poetry. The ode and the epic contain it only in germ; it contains both of them in a state of high development, and epitomizes both.”

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