Popularity? It is glory's small change. - Victor Hugo
Übermaß des Schmerzes und Übermaß der Freude dauern nur kurze Zeit. Alle Extreme widerstreben dem menschlichen Herzen. - Victor Hugo
If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away. - Victor Hugo
Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come. - Victor Hugo
Work, which makes a man free, and thought, which makes him worthy of freedom. - Victor Hugo
To die is nothing; but it is terrible not to live. - Victor Hugo
En France, que de gens à longues oreilles : ânes en littérature, lièvres en politique ! - Victor Hugo
What is grace? It is the inspiration from on high: it is love; it is liberty. Grace is the spirit of law. This discovery of the spirit of law belongs to Saint Paul; and what he calls "grace" from a heavenly point of view, we, from an earthly point, call "rigtheousness." - Victor Hugo
To be a saint is the exception; to be upright is the rule. Err, falter, sin, but be upright. To commit the least possible sin is the law for man. Sin is a gravitation. - Victor Hugo
What a grand thing, to be loved! What a grander thing still, to love! - Victor Hugo
A library implies an act of faith which generations, still in darkness hid, sign in their night in witness of the dawn."À qui la faute? (1872) - Victor Hugo
Being good is easy, what is difficult is being just. - Victor Hugo
These two beings, who had loved each other so exclusively, and with so touching a love, and who had lived so long for each other, were now suffering beside one another and through one another; without speaking of it, without harsh feeling, and smiling all the while. - 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
Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved. - Victor Hugo
Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face. - Victor Hugo
It is wrong to become absorbed in the divine law to such a degree as not to perceive human law. Death belongs to God alone. By what right do men touch that unknown thing? - Victor Hugo
Thought is the toil of the intelligence, revery its voluptuousness. To replace thought with revery is to confound a poison with a food. - Victor Hugo
Qui que vousw soyez qui voulez cultiver, vivifier, édifier, attendrir, apaiser... mettez des livres partout. [Ouverture du congrès littéraire international de 1878)] - Victor Hugo
Babylon violated diminishes Alexander; Rome enslaved diminishes Caesar; massacred Jerusalem diminishes Titus. Tyranny follows the tyrant. Woe to the man who leaves behind a shadow that bears his form. - Victor Hugo
I see black light (his last words) - Victor Hugo
A cannonball travels only two thousand miles an hour; light travels two hundred thousand miles a second. Such is the superiority of Jesus Christ over Napoleon. - Victor Hugo
To commit the least possible sin is the law for man. To live without sin is the dream of an angel. Everything terrestrial is subject to sin. Sin is a gravitation. - Victor Hugo
Initiative is doing the right thing without being told. - Victor Hugo
A study can be made against invasion by an army; no stand can be made against invasion by an idea. - Victor Hugo
Melancholy is the happiness of being sad. - Victor Hugo
Music expresses that which cannot remain silent and that which cannot be put into words. - Victor Hugo
Clearly he had his own strange way of judging things. I suspect he acquired it from the gospels. - Victor Hugo
Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent - Victor Hugo
To divinise is human, to humanise is divine. - Victor Hugo
Les bras d'une mère sont faits de tendresse et un doux sommeil benit l'enfant qui s'y abandonne. - Victor Hugo
It is not easy to keep silent when silence is a lie. - Victor Hugo
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. - Victor Hugo
England has two books, the Bible and Shakespeare. England made Shakespeare,but the Bible made England. - Victor Hugo
First of all, I wish you love, and that by loving you may also be loved.But if it’s not like that, be brief in forgettingAnd after you’ve forgotten, don’t keep anything. - Victor Hugo
Tall and thin, Mademoiselle Baptistine was a pale and gentle person. She was the incarnation of the word 'respectable,' whereas to be 'venerable,' a woman should lso be a mother. - Victor Hugo
A faith is a necessity to a man. Woe to him who believes in nothing. - Victor Hugo
Common sense is in spite of, not the result of, education. - 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 live. - Victor Hugo
Dream no small dreams. They have no power to stir the hearts of men. - Victor Hugo
There is nothing like dream to create the future. Utopia to-day, flesh and blood tomorrow. - Victor Hugo
Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant. - Victor Hugo
At the side of Enjolras, who represented the logic of revolution, was Combeferre, representing its philosophy. The difference between logic and philosophy is that one can decide upon war, whereas the other can only be fulfilled by peace. - Victor Hugo
Each man should frame life so that at some future hour fact and his dreaming meet. - 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
What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past. - Victor Hugo
How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said. - Victor Hugo
Oh! love!... That is to be two and to be but one. A man and a woman mingled into one angel. It is heaven. - Victor Hugo
There are no trifles in the human story, no trifling leaves on the tree. - Victor Hugo
The quantity of civilization is measured by the quality of imagination. - Victor Hugo
More powerful than the mighty armies is an idea whose time has come. - Victor Hugo
Make thought a whirlwind. - Victor Hugo
His ideas assumed a kind of stupefied and mechanical quality which is peculiar to despair. - Victor Hugo
The peasants of the Asturias believe that in every litter of wolves there is one pup that is killed by the mother for fear that on growing up it would devour the other little ones. - Victor Hugo
Certainly, I approve of political opinions, but there are people who do not know where to stop. - Victor Hugo
A day will come when there will be no battlefields, but markets opening to commerce and minds opening to ideas. - Victor Hugo
He who opens a school door, closes a prison. - Victor Hugo
Let us reflect, if we wish to be brilliant. Too much improvisation empties the mind in a stupid way. Running beer gathers no froth. No haste, gentlemen. - Victor Hugo
Though one believes in nothing, there are moments in life when one accepts the religion of the temple nearest at hand. - Victor Hugo
Good night! Good night!Far flies the light;But still God's loveShall shine above,Making all bright,Good night! Good night! - Victor Hugo
The greatest happiness of life it the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves. - Victor Hugo
Les révolutions sont de magnifiques improvisatrices. Un peu échevelées quelquefois. - 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 abandons the field is beaten. - Victor Hugo
Work is the law of life, and to reject it as boredom is to submit to it as torment. - Victor Hugo
One day of happiness is worth more than a lifetime of sorrow .... Under ordinary circumstances, jealousy is a suspicion to the person who excites it and degrading to the person who indulges it. - Victor Hugo
Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees. - Victor Hugo
The beautiful is as useful as the useful. ... perhaps more so. - Victor Hugo
To love another person is to see the face of God. - Victor Hugo
Nothing discernable to the eye of the spirit is more brilliant or obscure than man; nothing is more formidible, 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. - Victor Hugo
A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labour and there is invisible labour. - Victor Hugo
Do you know what friendship is... it is to be brother and sister; two souls which touch without mingling, two fingers on one hand. - Victor Hugo
Love is like a tree, it grows of its own accord, it puts down deep roots into our whole being. - Victor Hugo
Tu n’es plus là où tu étais, mais tu es partout là où je suis. - Victor Hugo
Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing. - Victor Hugo
Reason is intelligence taking exercise. Imagination is intelligence with an erection. - Victor Hugo
I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses. - Victor Hugo
Friend' is sometimes a word devoid of meaning; enemy, never. - Victor Hugo
No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come. - Victor Hugo
What am I to do on this earth? The choice rests with me: suffer or enjoy. Whither will suffering lead me? To nothingness; but I shall have suffered. Whither will enjoyment lead me? To nothingness; but I shall have enjoyed myself. - Victor Hugo
If suffer we must, let's suffer on the heights. - Victor Hugo
Where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and who can say which has the wider vision? - Victor Hugo
La suprema felicità della vita è essere amati per quello che si è, o meglio, essere amati a dispetto di quello che si è. - Victor Hugo
In the case of sand as in that of woman, there is a fineness which is treacherous. - Victor Hugo
La vie n'est qu'une longue perte de tout ce qu'on aime. - Victor Hugo
To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark. - Victor Hugo
Happiness lies for those who cry, those who hurt, those who have searched, and those who have tried for only they can appreciate the importance of people who have touched their lives. - 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
There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher. - 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
The sole social evil is darkness; humanity is identity, for all men are made of the same clay. - Victor Hugo
Hope is the Word which God has written on the brow of every man. - Victor Hugo
Perseverance, secret of all triumphs. - Victor Hugo
Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart. - 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 supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves. - Victor Hugo
The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved. - Victor Hugo
A criminal remains a criminal whether he uses a convict's suit or a monarch's crown. - Victor Hugo
Les meilleurs esprits ont leurs fétiches, et parfois se sentent vaguement meurtris des manques de respect de la logique. - Victor Hugo