Top 500 Victor Hugo Quotes (2024 Update)
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451. “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

452. “Solitude either develops the mental power, or renders men dull and vicious.”

— Victor Hugo

453. “You preserve your shame but you kill your glory.”

— Victor Hugo

454. “Who among us has not sought peace in a song?”

— Victor Hugo

455. “By putting forward the hands of the clock you shall not advance the hour.”

— Victor Hugo

456. “Whatever may be happening today, peace is the meaning of tomorrow.”

— Victor Hugo

457. “The most excellent symbol of the people is the paving stone. One walks on it until it falls on one’s head.”

— Victor Hugo

458. “Daring is the price of progress. All splendid conquests are the prize of boldness, more or less.”

— Victor Hugo

459. “God has set his intentions in the flowers, in the dawn, in the spring, it is his will that we should love.”

— Victor Hugo

460. “History has its truth; and so has legend hers.”

— Victor Hugo

461. “Is it not a thing divine to have a smile which, none know how, has the power to lighten the weight of that enormous chain which all the living in common drag behind them?”

— Victor Hugo

462. “Before him he saw two roads, both equally straight; but he did see two; and that terrified him – he who had never in his life known anything but one straight line. And, bitter anguish, these two roads were contradictory.”

— Victor Hugo

463. “Progress is the stride of God.”

— Victor Hugo

464. “There are many tongues to talk, and but few heads to think.”

— Victor Hugo

465. “All the human and animal manure which the world wastes, if returned to the land, instead of being thrown into the sea, would suffice to nourish the world.”

— Victor Hugo

466. “To think of shadows is a serious thing.”

— Victor Hugo

467. “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

468. “A criminal remains a criminal whether he uses a convict’s suit or a monarch’s crown.”

— Victor Hugo

469. “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

470. “The peasants of the Asturias believe that in every litter of wolves there is one pup that is killed by the mother for fear that on growing up it would devour the other little ones.”

— Victor Hugo

471. “His whole life was now summed up in two words: absolute uncertainty within an impenetrable fog.”

— Victor Hugo

472. “She was a lovely blonde, with fine teeth. She had gold and pearls for her dowry; but her gold was on her head, and her pearls were in her mouth.”

— Victor Hugo

473. “Symmetry is tedious, and tedium is the very basis of mourning. Despair yawns.”

— Victor Hugo

474. “My tastes are aristocratic, my actions democratic.”

— Victor Hugo

475. “God was bored by him.”

— Victor Hugo

476. “Men become accustomed to poison by degrees.”

— Victor Hugo

477. “Press on! A better fate awaits thee.”

— Victor Hugo

478. “Puns are the droppings of soaring wits.”

— Victor Hugo

479. “Often the losing of a battle leads to the winning of progress. Less glory but greater liberty: the drum is silent and the voices of reason can be heard.”

— Victor Hugo

480. “Children have their morning song as well as birds.”

— Victor Hugo

481. “Night and the day, when united, Bring forth the beautiful light.”

— Victor Hugo

482. “Desiring always to be in mourning, he clothed himself with night.”

— Victor Hugo

483. “The soul has illusions as the bird has wings: it is supported by them.”

— Victor Hugo

484. “Mirrors, those revealers of the truth, are hated; that does not prevent them from being of use.”

— Victor Hugo

485. “Humanity is identity. All men are made of the same clay. There is no difference, here below, at least, in predestination. The same shadow in front, the same flesh in the present, the same ashes afterwards. But ignorance, mingled with the human paste, blackens it. This incurable blackness takes possession of the interior of a man and is there converted into evil.”

— Victor Hugo

486. “Sleep comes more easily than it returns.”

— Victor Hugo

487. “His judgement demonstrates that one can be a genius and understand nothing of an art that is not one’s own.”

— Victor Hugo

488. “There is no more sovereign eloquence than the truth in indignation.”

— Victor Hugo

489. “Pain is as diverse as man. One suffers as one can.”

— Victor Hugo

490. “Enthusiasm is the fever of reason.”

— Victor Hugo

491. “It was SHE. Whoever has loved knows all the radiant meaning contained in the three letters of this word ’she.”

— Victor Hugo

492. “Never, even among animals, does the creature born to be a dove change into an osprey. That is only seen among men.”

— Victor Hugo

493. “Idleness is a mother. She has a son, robbery, and a daughter, hunger.”

— Victor Hugo

494. “My day’s work will begin again the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley.”

— Victor Hugo

495. “Liberation is not deliverance.”

— Victor Hugo

496. “Babylon violated diminishes Alexander; Rome enslaved diminishes Caesar; massacred Jerusalem diminishes Titus. Tyranny follows the tyrant. Woe to the man who leaves behind a shadow that bears his form.”

— Victor Hugo

497. “Whenever a man’s friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old.”

— Victor Hugo

498. “One sees qualities at a distance and defects at close range.”

— Victor Hugo

499. “That is the explanation of war, an outrage by humanity upon humanity in despite of humanity.”

— Victor Hugo

500. “Justice has its anger, Monsieur Bishop, and the wrath of justice is an element of progress. No matter what they say, the French Revolution is the greatest advance taken by mankind since the coming of Christ.”

— Victor Hugo