155 Best Victor Hugo Quotes to Awaken the Dreamer in You

1. “There is something more terrible than a hell of suffering – a hell of boredom.” – Victor Hugo

2. “Do not let it be your aim to be something, but to be someone.” – Victor Hugo

3. “Dreaming is happiness. Waiting is life.” – Victor Hugo

4. “The paradise of the rich is made out of the hell of the poor.” – Victor Hugo

5. “Do you hear the people sing Lost in the valley of the night? It is the music of a people Who are climbing to the light. For the wretched of the earth There is a flame that never dies. Even the darkest night will end And the sun will rise.” – Victor Hugo

6. “Never laugh at those who suffer; suffer sometimes those who laugh.” – Victor Hugo

7. “It is not so easy to keep silent when the silence is a lie.” – Victor Hugo

8. “Those who do not weep, do not see.” – Victor Hugo

9. “When liberty returns, I will return.” – Victor Hugo

10. “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.” – Victor Hugo

11. “Go to sleep in peace. God is awake.” – Victor Hugo

12. “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.” – Victor Hugo

13. “Love each other dearly always. There is scarcely anything else in the world but that: to love one another.” – Victor Hugo

14. “There are thoughts which are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the posture of the body, the soul is on its knees.” – Victor Hugo

15. “And then, strange to say, the first symptom of true love in a young man is timidity; in a girl, it is boldness.” – Victor Hugo

16. “It is sad to tell, but after having tried society, which had caused his misfortune, he tried Providence which created society, and condemned it also.” – Victor Hugo

17. “You who suffer because you love, love still more! To die of love, is to live by it.” – Victor Hugo

18. “Where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidence, chaos will soon reign.” – Victor Hugo

19. “The wise man does not grow old, but ripens.” – Victor Hugo

20. “He who opens a school door, closes a prison.” – Victor Hugo

21. “Love is the foolishness of men, and the wisdom of God.” – Victor Hugo

22. “Perseverance, secret of all triumphs.” – Victor Hugo

23. “The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.” – Victor Hugo

24. “The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.” – Victor Hugo

25. “If you are stone, be magnetic; if a plant, be sensitive; but if you are human be love.” – Victor Hugo

26. “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.” – Victor Hugo

27. “The soul has greater need of the ideal than of the real” – Victor Hugo

28. “Work is the law of life, and to reject it as boredom is to submit to it as torment.” – Victor Hugo

29. “Not being heard is no reason for silence.” – Victor Hugo

30. “Logic ignores the almost, just as the sun ignores the candle.” – Victor Hugo

31. “It is not easy to keep silent when silence is a lie.” – Victor Hugo

32. “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.” – Victor Hugo

33. “God put in man thought; society, action; nature, revery.” – Victor Hugo

34. “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.” – Victor Hugo

35. “Proverty and wealth are comparative sins.” – Victor Hugo

36. “Great buildings, like great mountains, are the work of centuries.” – Victor Hugo

37. “Reason is intelligence taking exercise. Imagination is intelligence with an erection.” – Victor Hugo

38. “A writer is a world trapped in a person.” – Victor Hugo

39. “Common sense is in spite of, not the result of, education.” – Victor Hugo

40. “When you get an idea into your head you find it in everything.” – Victor Hugo

41. “You preserve your shame but you kill your glory.” – Victor Hugo

42. “A woman’s best qualities are harmful if undiluted with prudence.” – Victor Hugo

43. “Faith is necessary to men; woe to him who believes in nothing!” – Victor Hugo

44. “Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.” – Victor Hugo

45. “All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.” – Victor Hugo

46. “No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.” – Victor Hugo

47. “Diamonds are to be found only in the darkness of the earth, and truth in the darkness of the mind. ” – Victor Hugo

48. “What happened between those two beings? Nothing. They were adoring one another.” – Victor Hugo

49. “Too much improvisation leaves the mind stupidly void.” – Victor Hugo

50. “The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. It is marvelous, yet simple.” – Victor Hugo

51. “The word is the Verb, and the Verb is God.” – Victor Hugo

52. “Curiosity is one of the forms of feminine bravery.” – Victor Hugo

53. “When a woman is talking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes.” – Victor Hugo

54. “There is in every village a torch – the teacher; and an extinguisher – the priest.” – Victor Hugo

55. “God knows better than we do what we need.” – Victor Hugo

56. “People do not lack strength, they lack will.” – Victor Hugo

57. “Let us study things that are no more. It is necessary to understand them, if only to avoid them.” – Victor Hugo

58. “God is behind everything, but everything hides God.” – Victor Hugo

59. “Not seeing people allows you to think of them as perfect in all kinds of ways.” – Victor Hugo

60. “You ask me what forces me to speak? a strange thing; my conscience.” – Victor Hugo

61. “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.” – Victor Hugo

62. “The future has several names. For the weak, it is impossible; for the fainthearted, it is unknown; but for the valiant, it is ideal.” – Victor Hugo

63. “The soul helps the body, and at certain moments raises it. It is the only bird that sustains its cage.” – Victor Hugo

64. “Need is a low door which, when we must by stern necessity pass through, forces the greatest to bend down the most.” – Victor Hugo

65. “Nobody loves the light like the blind man.” – Victor Hugo

66. “There is no such thing as a little country. The greatness of a people is no more determined by their numbers than the greatness of a man is by his height.” – Victor Hugo

67. “They say love is blindness of heart; I say not to love is blindness.” – Victor Hugo

68. “Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant.” – Victor Hugo

69. “I had a dream my life would be different from this hell I am living, so different from what it seemed. Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.” – Victor Hugo

70. “Initiative is doing the right thing without being told.” – Victor Hugo

71. “There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” – Victor Hugo

72. “To know, to think, to dream. That is everything.” – Victor Hugo

73. “He loved books; books are cold but safe friends.” – Victor Hugo

74. “To die is nothing; but it is terrible not to live.” – Victor Hugo

75. “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.” – Victor Hugo

76. “Nothing can be sadder or more profound than to see a thousand things for the first and last time.” – Victor Hugo

77. “One believes others will do what he will do to himself.” – Victor Hugo

78. “Life is a theatre set in which there are but few practicable entrances.” – Victor Hugo

79. “Caution is the eldest child of wisdom.” – Victor Hugo

80. “Promise to give me a kiss on my brow when I am dead.–I shall feel it.” – Victor Hugo

81. “To lie a little is not possible: he who lies, lies the whole lie.” – Victor Hugo

82. “A language does not become fixed. The human intellect is always on the march, or, if you prefer, in movement, and languages with it.” – Victor Hugo

83. “Nothing makes a man so adventurous as an empty pocket.” – Victor Hugo

84. “Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings.” – Victor Hugo

85. “Nihilism has no substance. There is no such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing.” – Victor Hugo

86. “Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.” – Victor Hugo

87. “It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.” – Victor Hugo

88. “To put everything in balance is good, to put everything in harmony is better.” – Victor Hugo

89. “There is nothing like a dream to create the future.” – Victor Hugo

90. “As with stomachs, we should pity minds that do not eat.” – Victor Hugo

91. “We are all under sentence of death, but with a sort of indefinite reprieve.” – Victor Hugo

92. “God created the flirt as soon as he made the fool.” – Victor Hugo

93. “Love is the only future God offers.” – Victor Hugo

94. “Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age.” – Victor Hugo

95. “God became man, granted. The devil became a woman.” – Victor Hugo

96. “What I feel for you seems less of earth and more of a cloudless heaven.” – Victor Hugo

97. “Often when we think we are knotting one thread, we are tying quite another.” – Victor Hugo

98. “To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.” – Victor Hugo

99. “It is by suffering that human beings become angels.” – Victor Hugo

100. “The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved, loved for ourselves, or rather loved in spite of ourselves.” – Victor Hugo

101. “The man who fights against his own country is never a hero.” – Victor Hugo

102. “What makes night within us may leave stars.” – Victor Hugo

103. “There is a spectacle more grand than the sea; it is heaven; there is a spectacle more grand than heaven; it is the conscience.” – Victor Hugo

104. “Inspiration and genius -one and the same.” – Victor Hugo

105. “Melancholy is the pleasure of being sad.” – Victor Hugo

106. “Do you hear the people sing? Singing a song of angry men.” – Victor Hugo

107. “Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart.” – Victor Hugo

108. “Life is the flower for which love is the honey.” – Victor Hugo

109. “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 love.” – Victor Hugo

110. “Success is a very hideous thing. Its false resemblance to merit deceives men.” – Victor Hugo

111. “God manifests himself to us in the first degree through the life of the universe, and in the second degree through the thought of man. The second manifestation is not less holy than the first. The first is named Nature, the second is named Art.” – Victor Hugo

112. “To have lied is to have suffered.” – Victor Hugo

113. “Go out in the world and work like money doesn’t matter, sing as if no one is listening, love as if you have never been hurt, and dance as if no one is watching.” – Victor Hugo

114. “The most beautiful of altars, he said, is the soul of an unhappy creature consoled and thankfing God.” – Victor Hugo

115. “Our mind is enriched by what we receive, our heart by what we give.” – Victor Hugo

116. “To love another person is to see the face of God.” – Victor Hugo

117. “By putting forward the hands of the clock you shall not advance the hour.” – Victor Hugo

118. “To love beauty is to see light.” – Victor Hugo

119. “First problem. To produce wealth. Second problem. To distribute it.” – Victor Hugo

120. “The straight line, a respectable optical illusion which ruins many a man.” – Victor Hugo

121. “A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.” – Victor Hugo

122. “He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two.” – Victor Hugo

123. “Well, for us, in history where goodness is a rare pearl, he who was good almost takes precedence over he who was great.” – Victor Hugo

124. “Those who always pray are necessary to those who never pray.” – Victor Hugo

125. “Don’t educate your children to be rich. Educate them to be happy, so they know the value of things, not the price.” – Victor Hugo

126. “Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats.” – Victor Hugo

127. “Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.” – Victor Hugo

128. “When a man is out of sight, it is not too long before he is out of mind.” – Victor Hugo

129. “Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.” – Victor Hugo

130. “A man without a woman is like a pistol without a trigger; it is the woman who makes the man go off.” – Victor Hugo

131. “Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.” – Victor Hugo

132. “An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise.” – Victor Hugo

133. “Concision in style, precision in thought, decision in life.” – Victor Hugo

134. “The smaller it is the heart, more hatred houses.” – Victor Hugo

135. “Morality is truth in full bloom.” – Victor Hugo

136. “Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.” – Victor Hugo

137. “O darkness, the sky is a gloomy precinct Whose door you close, and whose key the soul owns; And night divides itself in half, being diabolical and holy, Between Ilis, the black angel, and Christ, the starry Human Being.” – Victor Hugo

138. “We do not comprehend everything, but we insult nothing.” – Victor Hugo

139. “Conscience is God present in man.” – Victor Hugo

140. “What a grand thing, to be loved! What a grander thing still, to love!” – Victor Hugo

141. “To breathe Paris is to preserve one’s soul.” – Victor Hugo

142. “If I speak, I am condemned. If I stay silent, I am damned!” – Victor Hugo

143. “I’m not totally useless. I can be used as a bad example.” – Victor Hugo

144. “Are you afraid of the good you might do?” – Victor Hugo

145. “It is often our best friends who throw us down.” – Victor Hugo

146. “No force on earth can stop an idea whose time has come” – Victor Hugo

147. “Let us sacrifice one day to gain perhaps a whole life.” – Victor Hugo

148. “Short as life is, we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time.” – Victor Hugo

149. “There are accepted revolutions, revolutions which are called revolutions; there are refused revolutions, which are called riots.” – Victor Hugo

150. “When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age.” – Victor Hugo

151. “War can only be qualified by its object, and there is neither foreign war nor civil war, there is only just or unjust war.” – Victor Hugo

152. “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.” – Victor Hugo

153. “Laughter is sunshine, it chases winter from the human face.” – Victor Hugo

154. “A mother’s arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them.” – Victor Hugo

155. “Philosophy is the microscope of thought.” – Victor Hugo

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