Victor Hugo Quotes
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To be perfectly happy it does not suffice to possess happiness, it is necessary to have deserved it.
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Il y a maintenant en France dans chaque village un flambeau allumé, le maître d'école, et une bouche qui souffle dessus, le curé.
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No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.
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Liberation is not deliverance.
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It is by suffering that human beings become angels.
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Look not at the face, young girl, look at the heart. The heart of a handsome young man is often deformed. There are hearts in which love does not keep. Young girl, the pine is not beautiful; it is not beautiful like the poplar, but it keeps its foliage in winter.
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The wise man does not grow old, but ripens.
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Whatever causes night in our souls may leave stars.
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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.
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Wherever the Turkish hoof trods, no grass grows.
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Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.
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I will be Chateaubriand or nothing.
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The ode lives upon the ideal, the epic upon the grandiose, the drama upon the real.
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The brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over we realize this: that the human race has been roughly handled, but that it has advanced.
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Every diminution of the liberty of the press is followed by a diminution of civilization. Wherever we see the freedom of the press interfered with, there we see the nutrition of the human family interrupted.
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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.
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Jésus a pleuré, Voltaire a souri; c’est de cette larme divine et de ce sourire humain qu’est faite la douceur de la civilisation actuelle.
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A great artist is a great man in a great child.
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Be like the bird who, pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing she hath wings.
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An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.
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The last resort of kings, the cannonball. The last resort of the people, the paving stone.
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Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization.
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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.
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Habit is the nursery of errors.