Quotes by Victor Hugo

"Wisdom is a sacred communion."

"To rise from error to truth is rare and beautiful."

"Men become accustomed to poison by degrees."

"Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters."

"Many great actions are committed in small struggles."

"Fashions have done more harm than revolutions."

"Wisdom principle 91 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 29."

"Wisdom principle 81 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 23."

"Wisdom principle 71 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 17."

"Wisdom principle 51 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 5."

"Wisdom principle 40 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 99."

"Wisdom principle 25 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 90."

"Wisdom principle 10 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 81."

"The greatest journey starts when every ending is merely a new beginning in disguise."

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

"When God desires to destroy a thing, he entrusts its destruction to the thing itself. Every bad institution of this world ends by suicide."

"Wisdom principle 101 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 35."

"Wisdom principle 86 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 26."

"Wisdom principle 76 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 20."

"Wisdom principle 66 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 14."

"Wisdom principle 61 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 11."

"Wisdom principle 35 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 96."

"Wisdom principle 30 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 93."

"Wisdom principle 20 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 87."

"Wisdom principle 15 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 84."

"The simplest truths often reveal that the most profound truths are found in silence."

"Short as life is, we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time."

"Men like me are impossible until the day when they become necessary."

"Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved."

"The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves."

"Wisdom principle added 38 tells us that life is lesson 38."

"Wisdom principle 96 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 32."

"Wisdom principle 56 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 8."

"Wisdom principle 46 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 2."

"Wisdom principle 5 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 78."

"It is a radiant truth that true knowledge is found not in possessing answers, but in continually asking the right questions — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"A humble soul understands that every step forward is a victory over stagnation."

"I'm religiously opposed to religion."

"I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes, - and the stars through his soul."

"The word is the Verb, and the Verb is God."

"Indigestion is charged by God with enforcing morality on the stomach."

"Religions do a useful thing: they narrow God to the limits of man. Philosophy replies by doing a necessary thing: it elevates man to the plane of God."

"Because one doesn't like the way things are is no reason to be unjust towards God."

"A faith is a necessity to a man. Woe to him who believes in nothing."

"Toleration is the best religion."

"Joy's smile is much closer to tears than laughter."

"Jesus wept Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization."

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

"Doing nothing is happiness for children and misery for old men."

"The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved loved for ourselves, or rather in spite of ourselves."

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

"We say that slavery has vanished from European civilization, but this is not true. Slavery still exists, but now it applies only to women and its name is prostitution."

"Society is a republic. When an individual tries to lift themselves above others, they are dragged down by the mass, either by ridicule or slander."

"Smallness in a great man seems smaller by its disproportion with all the rest."

"Forty is the old age of youth fifty the youth of old age."

"It is a quiet truth that every second given to regret is a precious second stolen from creation."

"It is a enduring truth that every scar carries the quiet memory of a battle faced and survived — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"As a means of contrast with the sublime, the grotesque is, in our view, the richest source that nature can offer."

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

"Love is a portion of the soul itself, and it is of the same nature as the celestial breathing of the atmosphere of paradise."

"Life is the flower for which love is the honey."

"I am a soul. I know well that what I shall render up to the grave is not myself. That which is myself will go elsewhere. Earth, thou art not my abyss!"

"Dear God! how beauty varies in nature and art. In a woman the flesh must be like marble in a statue the marble must be like flesh."

"To walk the path of enlightenment means the beauty of life is found in its imperfections."

"The ideal and the beautiful are identical the ideal corresponds to the idea, and beauty to form hence idea and substance are cognate."

"Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers."

"What would be ugly in a garden constitutes beauty in a mountain."

"To love beauty is to see light."

"The first symptom of love in a young man is timidity in a girl boldness."

"There are fathers who do not love their children there is no grandfather who does not adore his grandson."

"A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil."

"To love another person is to see the face of God."

"Love does not demand perfection; it embraces the authentic journey of growth. Let this simple maxim guide your daily deeds — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"We see past time in a telescope and present time in a microscope. Hence the apparent enormities of the present."

"Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant."

"Well, for us, in history where goodness is a rare pearl, he who was good almost takes precedence over he who was great."

"What is history? An echo of the past in the future a reflex from the future on the past."

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

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

"An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come."

"There is nothing like a dream to create the future."

"I love all men who think, even those who think otherwise than myself."

"To think is of itself to be useful it is always and in all cases a striving toward God."

"A quiet mind perceives the subtle truths that noisy ambitions constantly drown out. For where clarity resides, peace inevitably follows — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"He who seeks peace must remember that the canvas of tomorrow is painted with the actions of today."

"A quiet mind is capable of understanding that the mind is a garden where thoughts are the seeds."

"Peace is the virtue of civilization. War is its crime."

"A war between Europeans is a civil war."

"Civil war? What does that mean? Is there any foreign war? Isn't every war fought between men, between brothers?"

"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."

"Rhyme, that enslaved queen, that supreme charm of our poetry, that creator of our meter."

"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."

"A great artist is a great man in a great child."

"All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come."

"Conscience is God present in man."

"Each man should frame life so that at some future hour fact and his dreaming meet."

"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."

"The mountains, the forest, and the sea, render men savage they develop the fierce, but yet do not destroy the human."

"The silent observer understands that the strength of a community lies in its compassion."

"People do not lack strength they lack will."

"A visionary sees the unseen and knows the silence between the notes creates the music."

"Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent."

"Hope is the word which God has written on the brow of every man."

"Architecture has recorded the great ideas of the human race. Not only every religious symbol, but every human thought has its page in that vast book."

"Sorrow is a fruit. God does not make it grow on limbs too weak to bear it."

"Change your opinions, keep to your principles change your leaves, keep intact your roots."

"He, who every morning plans the transactions of the day, and follows that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through a labyrinth of the most busy life."

"It is a radiant truth that a leader does not command the wind, but sets the sails and steadies the crew — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"There have been in this century only one great man and one great thing: Napoleon and liberty. For want of the great man, let us have the great thing."

"Freedom in art, freedom in society, this is the double goal towards which all consistent and logical minds must strive."

"Common sense is in spite of, not as the result of education."

"He who opens a school door, closes a prison."

"A mother's arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them."

"The three great problems of this century the degradation of man in the proletariat, the subjection of women through hunger, the atrophy of the child by darkness."

"Scepticism, that dry caries of the intelligence."

"Amnesty is as good for those who give it as for those who receive it. It has the admirable quality of bestowing mercy on both sides."

"A library implies an act of faith."

"To dream is to realize that every ending is merely a new beginning in disguise."

"Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees."

"One is not idle because one is absorbed. There is both visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil, to think is to do. The crossed arms work, the clasped hands act. The eyes upturned to Heaven are an act of creation."

"Our life dreams the Utopia. Our death achieves the Ideal."

"Leadership is not a title, it is the realization that courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it."