Victor Hugo (1802–1885) was a French Romantic writer and politician. His most famous works are the novels The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831) and Les Misérables (1862). He is considered to be one of the greatest French writers of all time.
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| Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent. - Victor Hugo |
Here is A selection of some of Victor Hugo most famous quotes: Victor Hugo Quotes About Love, Happiness and Marriage, Music, Education & Love at first sight.
Victor Hugo Quotes and Sayings
Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.
Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.
He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two.
Life's great happiness is to be convinced we are loved.
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.
He was fond of books, for they are cool and sure friends.
Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.
No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.
To love another person is to see the face of God.
Melancholy is the happiness of being sad.
To put everything in balance is good, to put everything in harmony is better.
The future has several names. For the weak, it is impossible; for the fainthearted, it is unknown; but for the valiant, it is ideal.
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.
The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.
It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.
An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise.
Love is like a tree: it grows by itself, roots itself deeply in our being and continues to flourish over a heart in ruin. The inexplicable fact is that the blinder it is, the more tenacious it is. It is never stronger than when it is completely unreasonable
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.
Not being heard is no reason for silence.
There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.
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.
Before him he saw two roads, both equally straight; but he did see two; and that terrified him--he who had never in his life known anything but one straight line. And, bitter anguish, these two roads were contradictory.
The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved - loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
Love is the foolishness of men, and the wisdom of God.
Laughter is sunshine, it chases winter from the human face.
What makes night within us may leave stars.
To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.
I have been loving you a little more every minute since this morning.
Those who do not weep, do not see.
There is something more terrible than a hell of suffering - a hell of boredom.
To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.
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.
If I speak, I am condemned. If I stay silent, I am damned!
Love has no middle term; either it destroys, or it saves. All human destiny is this dilemma. This dilemma, destruction or salvation, no fate proposes more inexorably than love. Love is life, if it is not death. Cradle; coffin, too. The same sentiment says yes and no in the human heart. Of all the things God has made, the human heart is the one that sheds most light, and alas! most night.
You who suffer because you love, love still more. To die of love, is to live by it.
Let us study things that are no more. It is necessary to understand them, if only to avoid them.
Reason is intelligence taking exercise. Imagination is intelligence with an erection.
To die for lack of love is horrible. The asphyxia of the soul.
Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.
It is not easy to keep silent when silence is a lie.
Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.
And remember, the truth that once was spoken: To love another person is to see the face of God.
You ask me what forces me to speak? a strange thing; my conscience.
Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart.
He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.
A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in--what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.
The soul helps the body, and at certain moments raises it. It is the only bird that sustains its cage.
People do not lack strength, they lack will.
If people did not love one another, I really don't see what use there would be in having any spri.
A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is invisible labor.
Not seeing people permits us to imagine them with every perfection.
There is nothing like a dream to create the future.
If you wish to understand what Revolution is, call it Progress; and if you wish to understand what Progress is, call it Tomorrow.
Nothing makes a man so adventurous as an empty pocket.
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.
Life is the flower for which love is the honey.
What a grand thing, to be loved! What a grander thing still, to love!
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.
Let us sacrifice one day to gain perhaps a whole life.
Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age.
There are no weeds, and no worthless men. There are only bad farmers.
When a woman is talking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes.
Diamonds are found only in the dark bowels of the earth; truths are found only in the depths of thought. It seemed to him that after descending into those depths after long groping in the blackest of this darkness, he had at last found one of these diamonds, one of these truths, and that he held it in his hand; and it blinded him to look at it.
The wicked envy and hate; it is their way of admiring.
When you get an idea into your head you find it in everything.
Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant.
Nobody loves the light like the blind man.
Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.
But listen, there will be more joy in heaven over the tears of a repentant sinner than over the white robes of a hundred just men.
He who every morning plans the transactions of that day and follows that plan carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life.
Diamonds are to be found only in the darkness of the earth, and truth in the darkness of the mind.
Son, brother, father, lover, friend. There is room in the heart for all the affections, as there is room in heaven for all the stars.
The first symptom of true love in a man is timidity, in a young woman, boldness. This is surprising, and yet nothing is more simple. It is the two sexes tending to approach each other and assuming each the other's qualities.
Hope is the word which God has written on the brow of every man.
What is said about men often has as much influence upon their lives, and especially upon their destinies, as what they do.
Virtue has a veil, vice a mask.
We pray together, we are afraid together, and then we go to sleep. Even if Satan came into the house, no one would interfere. After all, what is there to fear in this house? There is always one with us who is the strongest. Satan may visit our house, but the good Lord lives here.
To Love is to act.
For there are many great deeds done in the small struggles of life.
The ode lives upon the ideal, the epic upon the grandiose, the drama upon the real.
Be like the bird that, passing on her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings.
Those who live are those who fight.
Being good is easy, what is difficult is being just.
To think of shadows is a serious thing.
Nothing discernible to the eye of the spirit is more brilliant or obscure than man; nothing is more formidable, complex, mysterious, and infinite. There is a prospect greater than the sea, and it is the sky; there is a prospect greater than the sky, and it is the human soul.
Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.
Common sense is in spite of, not the result of, education.
When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right.
Every bird that flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw.
Perseverance, secret of all triumphs.
Mother's arms are made of tenderness, and sweet sleep blesses the child who lies within.
Concision in style, precision in thought, decision in life.
To pay compliments to the one we love is the first method of caressing, a demi-audacity venturing. A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.
Initiative is doing the right thing without being told.
Freedom in art, freedom in society, this is the double goal towards which all consistent and logical minds must strive.
Short as life is, we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time.
A one-eyed man is much more incomplete than a blind man, for he knows what it is that's lacking.
What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past.
Faith is necessary to men; woe to him who believes in nothing!
Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
To die is nothing; but it is terrible not to live.
The paradise of the rich is made out of the hell of the poor.
As with stomachs, we should pity minds that do not eat.
The realities of life do not allow themselves to be forgotten.
Fashions have done more harm than revolutions.
Each man should frame life so that at some future hour fact and his dreaming meet.
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.
A man without a woman is like a pistol without a trigger; it is the woman who makes the man go off.
The quantity of civilization is measured by the quality of imagination.
One drop of wine is enough to redden a whole glass of water.
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 live.
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