Quotes Collection: Victor Hugo

I have taken the liberty, and I must admit, joy, in searching out and bringing you this collection of quotes from the writings of, and conversations with, the great French writer Victor Hugo. You will see here many quotes here from Les Misérables, but many others as well.
We are now getting a new appreciation of the works-and words-of Victor Hugo, with the release of the new movie. Enjoy these quotes, from many sources, with special thanks to our friends over at www.goodreads.com, which does have a great selection of quotes, as well as lots of literature resources. For now, please read, reflect, and enjoy this collection of quotes, all from the pen or voice (often, yes, the same thing) of Victor Hugo:   

“The holy law of Jesus Christ governs our civilization, but it does not yet permeate it.”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

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

“To love another person is to see the face of God.”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

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

“… 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

“…But listen, there will be more joy in heaven over the tears of a repentant sinner than over the white robes of a hundred just men.”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

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

“Faith is necessary to men; woe to him who believes in nothing!”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“England has two books, the Bible and Shakespeare. England made Shakespeare,but the Bible made England.”
Victor Hugo

“To destroy abuses is not enough; Habits must also be changed. The windmill has gone, but the wind is still there.”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

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

“…It all seemed to him to have disappeared as if behind a curtain at a theater. There are such curtains that drop in life. God is moving on to the next act.”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“When you get an idea into your head you find it in everything.”
Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

“More powerful than the mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.”
Victor Hugo

“To die is nothing; but it is terrible not to live.”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Do not ask the name of the person who seeks a bed for the night. He who is reluctant to give his name is the one who most needs shelter.”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“There is no vacuum in the human heart. Certain demolitions take place, and it is well that they do, but on condition that they are followed by reconstructions.”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Sorrow is a fruit. God does not make it grow on limbs too weak to bear it.”
Victor Hugo

“A cannonball travels only two thousand miles an hour; light travels two hundred thousand miles a second. Such is the superiority of Jesus Christ over Napoleon.”
Victor Hugo

“God knows better than we do what we need.”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Being good is easy, what is difficult is being just.”
Victor Hugo

“Have no fear of robbers or murderers. They are external dangers, petty dangers. We should fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices the real murderers. The great dangers are within us. Why worry about what threatens our heads or our purses? Let us think instead of what threatens our souls.”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“We need those who pray constantly to compensate for those who do not pray at all.”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

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

“You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving. The great acts of love are done by those who are habitually performing small acts of kindness.
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables  

“Every blade has two edges; he who wounds with one wounds himself with the other.”
Victor Hugo

“Men become accustomed to poison by degrees”
Victor Hugo

“Nothing is more dangerous than to stop working. It is a habit that can soon be lost, one that is easily neglected and hard to resume. A measure of day-dreaming is a good thing, like a drug prudently used … But too much submerges and drowns. Woe to the intellectual worker who allows himself to lapse wholly from positive thinking into day-dreaming. He thinks he can easily change back, and tells himself that it is all one. He is wrong! To substitute day-dreaming for thought is to confuse poison with a source of nourishment.”
Victor Hugo

“It’s often our best friends who make us fall”
Victor Hugo, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame

“He had not yet lived long enough to have discovered that nothing is more close at hand then the impossible, and that what must be looked for is always the unforeseen.”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

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

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

“He who every morning plans the transaction of the day and follows out that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through the maze of the most busy life. But where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidence, chaos will soon reign”
Victor Hugo

“Let us be like a bird for a moment perched
On a frail branch when he sings;
Though he feels it bend, yet he sings his song,
Knowing that he has wings.”
Victor Hugo

“ … to undergo the fate of every newcomer in a little town, where there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think.”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Vengeance comes from the individual and punishment from God.”
Victor Hugo, The Last Day of a Condemned Man

“The peculiarity of sunrise is to make us laugh at all our terrors of the night, and our laugh is always proportioned to the fear we have had.”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“A fall from such a height is rarely straight downwards.”
Victor Hugo

“Revolutions are not born of chance but of necessity.”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Emergencies have always been necessary to progress. It was darkness which produced the lamp. It was fog that produced the compass. It was hunger that drove us to exploration. And it took a depression to teach us the real value of a job.”
Victor Hugo

“One day—when the Emperor had come to call on his uncle the cardinal—our worthy priest happened to be waiting as his Majesty went by. Noticing that the old man looked at him with a certain curiosity, Napoleon turned around and said brusquely, ‘Who is this good man looking at me?’
‘Sire,’ replied M. Myriel, “you are looking at a good man, and I at a great one. May we both be the better for it.”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around everything that shines. Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats.
Victor Hugo, Choses Vues

“So long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Miserables cannot fail to be of use.”
Victor Hugo

“What a grand thing it is to be loved! What a far grander thing it is to love!”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Reality in strong doses frightens.”
Victor Hugo, The Toilers of the Sea

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

“An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not the invasion of ideas.”
Victor Hugo

“The future has many names: For the weak, it means the unattainable. For the fearful, it means the unknown. For the courageous, it means opportunity.”
Victor Hugo

“When I speak to you about myself, I’m speaking to you about yourself. How is it that you don’t see that?”
Victor Hugo

“To love is to act.”
Victor Hugo

“A smile is the same as sunshine; it banishes winter from the human countenance.”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Unless the Lord guard the house, in vain do they watch who guard it.”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“In joined hands there is still some token of hope, in the clinched fist none.”
Victor Hugo, The Toilers of the Sea

“Laughter is the sun which drives the winter from the human face.”
Victor Hugo

“With a tiny bit of effort, the nettle would be useful; if you neglect it, it becomes a pest. So then we kill it. How many men are like nettles… My friends, there is no such thing as a weed and no such thing as a bad man. There are only bad cultivators.”
Victor Hugo

“The wise man is he who knows when and how to stop”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“I think, therefore I doubt.”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

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

“The animal is ignorant of the fact that he knows. The man is aware of the fact that he is ignorant.”
Victor Hugo

“Freedom begins where it ends ignorance.”
Victor Hugo