Victor Marie Hugo was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. Hugo is considered to be one of the greatest and best-known French writers. Many of his works have inspired music, both during his lifetime and after his death, including the musicals Notre-Dame de Paris and Les Misérables. He produced more than 4,000 drawings in his lifetime, and campaigned for social causes such as the abolition of capital punishment. His legacy has been honoured in many ways, including his portrait being placed on French currency.
Some of the best quotes from Victor Hugo are listed below.
- “A day will come when there will be no battlefields, but markets opening to commerce and minds opening to ideas.” – Victor Hugo
- “A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.” – Victor Hugo
- “A study can be made against invasion by an army; no stand can be made against invasion by an idea.” – Victor Hugo
- “Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings.” – Victor Hugo
- “Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.” – Victor Hugo
- “Christianity leads poetry to the truth. Like it, the modern muse will see things in a higher and broader light. It will realize that everything in creation is not humanly beautiful, that the ugly exists beside the beautiful, the unshapely beside the graceful, the grotesque on the reverse of the sublime, evil with good, darkness with light.” – Victor Hugo
- “Emergencies have always been necessary to progress. It was darkness which produced the lamp. It was fog that produced the compass. It was hunger that drove us to exploration. And it took a depression to teach us the real value of a job.” – Victor Hugo
- “Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.” – Victor Hugo
- “Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats.” – Victor Hugo
- “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
- “Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.” – 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
- “He who every morning plans the transaction of the day and follows out that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through the maze of the most busy life. But where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidence, chaos will soon reign.” – Victor Hugo
- “He who opens a school door, closes a prison.” – Victor Hugo
- “Hope is the word which God has written on the brow of every man.” – Victor Hugo
- “If you wish to understand what Revolution is, call it Progress; and if you wish to understand what Progress is, call it Tomorrow.” – Victor Hugo
- “Initiative is doing the right thing without being told.” – Victor Hugo
- “Inspiration and genius–one and the same.” – Victor Hugo
- “It is by suffering that human beings become angels.” – Victor Hugo
- “It is from book that wise people derives consolation in the troubles of life.” – Victor Hugo
- “Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.” – Victor Hugo
- “Life is a voyage” – Victor Hugo
- “Life is the flower for which love is the honey.” – Victor Hugo
- “Love is a portion of the soul itself, and it is of the same nature as the celestial breathing of the atmosphere of paradise.” – Victor Hugo
- “Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.” – Victor Hugo
- “Not being heard is no reason for silence.” – Victor Hugo
- “Nothing is stronger than an idea whose time has come.” – Victor Hugo
- “People do not lack strength; they lack will.” – Victor Hugo
- “Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause.” – Victor Hugo
- “The first symptom of love in a young man is timidity; in a girl boldness.” – Victor Hugo
- “The future has several names. For the weak, it is impossible; for the fainthearted, it is unknown; but for the valiant, it is ideal.” – Victor Hugo
- “The great acts of love are done by those who are habitually performing small acts of kindness.” – Victor Hugo
- “The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved, loved for ourselves, or rather loved in spite of ourselves.” – Victor Hugo
- “The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.” – Victor Hugo
- “The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real that we exist, it is by the ideal that we love.” – Victor Hugo
- “The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories that it has come to be disbelieved. Few people daresay nowadays that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet that is the way love begins, and only that way.” – Victor Hugo
- “The reduction of the universe to a single being, the expansion of a single being even to God, this is love.” – Victor Hugo
- “There are thoughts which are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the posture of the body, the soul is on its knees” – Victor Hugo
- “There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher” – Victor Hugo
- “There is something more terrible than a hell of suffering–a hell of boredom.” – Victor Hugo
- “Those who live are those who fight.” – Victor Hugo
- “To divinise is human. To humanise is divine.” – Victor Hugo
- “To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do.” – Victor Hugo
- “To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.” – Victor Hugo
- “To love another person is to see the face of God.” – Victor Hugo
- “What a grand thing to be loved!” – Victor Hugo
- “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
- “When a man understands the art of seeing, he can trace the spirit of an age and the features of a king even in the knocker on a door.” – Victor Hugo
- “When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn of happy old age.” – Victor Hugo
- “You who suffer because you love, love still more. To die of love, is to live by it.” – Victor Hugo
