Victor Hugo Quotes

“Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices are the real murderers. The great dangers lie within ourselves.”

“When liberty returns, I will return.”

“As with stomachs, we should pity minds that do not eat.”

“Let us leave to the brain what belongs to it, and agree that the work of the men of genius is of the superhuman, the offspring of man.”

“People generally will soon understand that writers should be judged, not according to rules and species, which are contrary to nature and art, but according to the immutable principles of the art of composition, and the special laws of their individual temperaments.”

“Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.”

“Nothing is more dangerous than discontinued labor; it is habit lost. A habit easy to abandon, difficult to resume.”

“You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

“In saying no to progress, it is not the future which they condemn, but themselves. They give themselves a melancholy disease; they inoculate themselves with the past. There is but one way of refusing tomorrow, that is to die.”

“Love is reducing the universe to one being.”

“To love beauty is to see light.”

“Taste is the common sense of genius.”

“"I should hope so," Laigle replied, "for my coat and I live comfortably together. It has assumed all my wrinkles, does not hurt me anywhere, has moulded itself on my deformities, and is complacent to all my movements, and 1 only feel its presence because it keeps me warm."”

“Each of our passions, even love, has a stomach that must not be overloaded. We must in everything write the word 'finis' in time; we must restrain ourselves, when it becomes urgent; we must draw the bolt on the appetite, play a fantasia on the violin, then break the strings with our own hand. The Wise man is he who knows when and how to stop.”

“Astronomy, that micography of heaven, is the most magnificent of the sciences. ... Astronomy has its clear side and its luminous side; on its clear side it is tinctured with algebra, on its luminous side with poetry.”

“Women play with their beauty as children do with their knives. They wound themselves with it.”

“For dogs we kings should have lions, and for cats, tigers. The great benefits a crown.”

“The heart becomes heroic through passion. It is no longer composed of anything but what is pure; it no longer rests upon anything but what is elevated and great.”

“Hypocrisy is nothing, in fact, but a horrible hopefulness.”

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

“There is no such thing as a little country. The greatness of a people is no more determined by their numbers than the greatness of a man is by his height.”

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

“Nature is pitiless; she never withdraws her flowers, her music, her fragrance, and her sunlight from before human cruelty or suffering.”

“Curiosity is one of the forms of feminine bravery.”

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