quotes by Victor Hugo

"Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent"
— 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

"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

"The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves."
— Victor Hugo

"No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come."
— 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 (Les Miserables (Modern Library))

"Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees."
— Victor Hugo

"To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark."
— Victor Hugo

"He who opens a school door, closes a prison."
— Victor Hugo

"To love another person is to see the face of God."
— Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)

"Nothing makes a man so adventurous as an empty pocket."
— Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)

"Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face."
— Victor Hugo

"Imagination is intelligence with an erection"
— Victor Hugo

"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 (Les Misérables)

"so long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation which, in the midst of civilization, artificially creates a hell on earth, and complicates with human fatality a destiny that is divine; so long as the three problems of the century - the degradation of man by the exploitation of his labour, the ruin of women by starvation and the atrophy of childhood by physical and spiritual night are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words and from a still broader point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, there should be a need for books such as this."
— Victor Hugo

"A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is invisible labor."
— Victor Hugo (Les Miserables (Modern Library))

"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

"What is said about men often has as much influence upon their lives, and especially upon their destinies, as what they do."
— Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)

"Nature is pitiless; she never withdraws her flowers, her music, her fragrance, and her sunlight from before human cruelty or suffering."
— Victor Hugo (Quatre-vingt treize)

"Each man should frame life so that at some future hour fact and his dreaming meet."
— Victor Hugo