Quotes by Victor Hugo

Habit is the nursery of errors.

Wisdom is a sacred communion.

Concision in style, precision in thought, decision in life.

Joys 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.

When a woman is talking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes.

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.

Verse in itself does not constitute poetry. Verse is only an elegant vestment for a beautiful form. Poetry can express itself in prose, but it does so more perfectly under the grace and majesty of verse. It is poetry of soul that inspires noble sentiments and noble actions as well as noble writings.

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

In the French language, there is a great gulf between prose and poetry; in English, there is hardly any difference. It is a splendid privilege of the great literary languages Greek, Latin, and French that they possess a prose. English has not this privilege. There is no prose in English.

Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.

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

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.

Liberation is not deliverance.

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

“It is not easy to keep silent when silence is a lie.”

“There are, as we know, powerful and illustrious atheists. At bottom, led back to the truth by their very force, they are not absolutely sure that they are atheists; it is with them only a question of definition, and in any case, if they do not believe in God, being great minds, they prove God.”

“Well, listen a moment, Monsieur Mayor; I have often been severe in my life towards others. It was just. I did right. Now if I were not severe towards myself, all I have justly done would become injustice. Should I spare myself more than others? No. What! if I should be prompt only to punish others and not myself, I should be a wretched indeed! - Javert to M. Madeleine”

“The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves—say rather, loved in spite of ourselves.”

“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.”