Victor Hugo Quotes

Author Image

Victor Hugo

Profession : Author

Birth : February 26, 1802

A noble soul and real poetic talent are almost always inseparable.

Victor Hugo

Liberation is not deliverance.

Victor Hugo

Nature has made a pebble and a female. The lapidary makes the diamond, and the lover makes the woman.

Victor Hugo

Sublime upon sublime scarcely presents a contrast, and we need a little rest from everything, even the beautiful.

Victor Hugo

Thought is the labor of the intellect, reverie is its pleasure.

Victor Hugo

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.

Victor Hugo

I would have liked to be - indeed, I should have been - a second Rembrandt.

Victor Hugo

Do not let it be your aim to be something, but to be someone.

Victor Hugo

I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes, - and the stars through his soul.

Victor Hugo

It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life.

Victor Hugo

We say that slavery has vanished from European civilization, but this is not true. Slavery still exists, but now it applies only to women and its name is prostitution.

Victor Hugo

Strange to say, the luminous world is the invisible world; the luminous world is that which we do not see. Our eyes of flesh see only night.

Victor Hugo

There are no rules, no models; rather, there are no rules other than the general laws of Nature.

Victor Hugo

To think of shadows is a serious thing.

Victor Hugo

As a means of contrast with the sublime, the grotesque is, in our view, the richest source that nature can offer.

Victor Hugo

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

Love, in the eyes of the world, is either a carnal appetite or a vague fancy, which possession extinguishes or absence destroys. That is why it is commonly said, with a strange abuse of words, that passion does not endure.

Victor Hugo

Smallness in a great man seems smaller by its disproportion with all the rest.

Victor Hugo

The animal is ignorant of the fact that he knows. The man is aware of the fact that he is ignorant.

Victor Hugo

What a grand thing, to be loved! What a grander thing still, to love!

Victor Hugo