People do not lack strength, they lack will.
– Victor Hugo
You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created
a new idea.
– Victor Hugo
Nothing else in the world… not all the armies… is so powerful as an idea whose time has
come.
– Victor Hugo
There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.
– Victor Hugo
The word which God has written on the brow of every man is hope.
– Victor Hugo
What Is Love? I have met in the streets a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was
old, his coat worn, the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul.
– Victor Hugo
Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.
– Victor Hugo
Habit is the nursery of errors.
– Victor Hugo
There is something more terrible than a hell of suffering – a hell of boredom.
– Victor Hugo
Good actions are the invisible hinges on the doors of heaven.
– Victor Hugo
The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.
– Victor Hugo
Diamonds are to be found only in the darkness of the earth, and truth in the darkness of the
mind.
– Victor Hugo
To put everything in balance is good, to put everything in harmony is better.
– Victor Hugo
The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be
disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they
have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only.
– Victor Hugo
What matters deafness of the ear, when the mind hears? The one true deafness, the
incurable deafness, is that of the mind.
– Victor Hugo
Imagination is intelligence with an erection.
– Victor Hugo
Common sense is in spite of, not the result of, education.
– Victor Hugo
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
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
Mothers arms are made of tenderness, and sweet sleep blesses the child who lies therein.
– Victor Hugo
You ask me what forces me to speak? A strange thing; my conscience.
– Victor Hugo
To err is human. To loaf is Parisian.
– Victor Hugo
The quantity of civilization is measured by the quality of imagination.
– Victor Hugo
To love another person is to see the face of God.
– Victor Hugo
A day will come when there will be no battlefields, but markets opening to commerce and
minds opening to ideas.
– Victor Hugo
Ideas can no more flow backward than can a river.
– 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
Tears unshed are far more bitter than those that flow.
– Victor Hugo
Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.
– Victor Hugo
He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
– Victor Hugo
Our acts make or mar us, we are the children of our own deeds.
– Victor Hugo
Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.
– Victor Hugo
Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause.
– Victor Hugo
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
The first symptom of love in a young man is timidity; in a girl boldness.
– Victor Hugo
Men hate those to whom they have to lie.
– Victor Hugo
It is not easy to keep silent when silence is a lie.
– Victor Hugo
Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers.
– Victor Hugo
Melancholy is the pleasure of being sad.
– Victor Hugo
All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.
– Victor Hugo
The need of the immaterial is the most deeply rooted of all needs. One must have bread; but
before bread, one must have the ideal.
– Victor Hugo
To die is nothing; but it is terrible not to live.
– Victor Hugo
Knowing exactly how much of the future can be introduced into the present is the secret of a
great government.
– Victor Hugo
Life’s greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved.
– Victor Hugo