Top 500 Victor Hugo Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “Whatever causes night in our souls may leave stars. Cimourdain was full of virtues and truth, but they shine out of a dark background.”

— Victor Hugo

202. “Vengeance comes from the individual and punishment from God.”

— Victor Hugo

203. “First it was necessary to civilize man in relation to man. Now it is necessary to civilize man in relation to nature and the animals.”

— Victor Hugo

204. “Gutenberg’s invention of printing is the greatest event-the mother of revolution.”

— Victor Hugo

205. “It is man’s consolation that the future is to be a sunrise instead of a sunset.”

— Victor Hugo

206. “Our life dreams the Utopia. Our death achieves the Ideal.”

— Victor Hugo

207. “Good actions are the invisible hinges on the doors of heaven.”

— Victor Hugo

208. “If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away.”

— Victor Hugo

209. “Thought is the work of the intellect, reverie is its self-indulgence. To substitute day-dreaming for thought is to confuse a poison with a source of nourishment.”

— Victor Hugo

210. “Knowledge is a weight added to conscience.”

— Victor Hugo

211. “Hope is a delusion; no hand can grasp a wave or a shadow.”

— Victor Hugo

212. “At the shrine of friendship never say die, let the wine of friendship never run dry.”

— Victor Hugo

213. “It is by suffering that human beings become angels.”

— Victor Hugo

214. “The guillotine is the ultimate expression of Law, and its name is vengeance; it is not neutral, nor does it allow us to remain neutral.”

— Victor Hugo

215. “Our acts make or mar us, we are the children of our own deeds.”

— Victor Hugo

216. “We teachers make the road, others will make the journey.”

— Victor Hugo

217. “Reaction – a boat which is going against the current but which does not prevent the river from flowing on.”

— Victor Hugo

218. “There are fathers who do not love their children; there is no grandfather who does not adore his grandson.”

— Victor Hugo

219. “A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.”

— Victor Hugo

220. “Children at once accept joy and happiness with quick familiarity, being themselves naturally all happiness and joy.”

— Victor Hugo

221. “Stupidity talks, vanity acts.”

— Victor Hugo

222. “He did not study God; he was dazzled by him.”

— Victor Hugo

223. “Thought is the labor of the intellect, reverie is its pleasure.”

— Victor Hugo

224. “I love all men who think, even those who think otherwise than myself.”

— Victor Hugo

225. “Love is the only future God offers.”

— Victor Hugo

226. “Sleep in Peace, God is awake.”

— Victor Hugo

227. “Homo homini monstrum.”

— Victor Hugo

228. “Let us fear the worst, but work with faith; the best will always take care of itself.”

— Victor Hugo

229. “There is a secret drawer in every woman’s heart.”

— Victor Hugo

230. “What I feel for you seems less of earth and more of a cloudless heaven.”

— Victor Hugo

231. “I represent a party which does not yet exist: the party Revolution-Civilization. This party will make the twentieth century. There will issue from it first the United States of Europe, then the United States of the World.”

— Victor Hugo

232. “To live a life which is a perpetual falsehood is to suffer unknown tortures.”

— Victor Hugo

233. “Wisdom is the health of the soul.”

— Victor Hugo

234. “Men are still men. The despot’s wickedness Comes of ill teaching, and of power’s excess, – Comes of the purple he from childhood wears, Slaves would be tyrants if the chance were theirs.”

— Victor Hugo

235. “Architecture has recorded the great ideas of the human race. Not only every religious symbol, but every human thought has its page in that vast book.”

— Victor Hugo

Featured in: Book Quotes

236. “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

237. “There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.”

— Victor Hugo

238. “A language does not become fixed. The human intellect is always on the march, or, if you prefer, in movement, and languages with it.”

— Victor Hugo

239. “It is an unpleasant thing to go to bed without supper, it is a still less pleasant thing not to sup and not to know where one is to sleep.”

— Victor Hugo

240. “Nature, like a kind and smiling mother, lends herself to our dreams and cherishes our fancies.”

— Victor Hugo

241. “Nisi Dominus custodierit domum, in vanum vigilant qui custodiunt eam,” Unless the Lord guard the house, in vain do they watch who guard it.”

— Victor Hugo

242. “Nothing awakens reminiscence like an aroma.”

— Victor Hugo

243. “The tomb is not a blind alley: it is a thoroughfare. It closes on the twilight. It opens on the dawn.”

— Victor Hugo

244. “Tobacco is the plant that converts thoughts into dreams.”

— Victor Hugo

245. “Amnesty is as good for those who give it as for those who receive it. It has the admirable quality of bestowing mercy on both sides.”

— Victor Hugo

246. “In joined hands there is still some token of hope, in the clinched fist none.”

— Victor Hugo

247. “Slaves would be tyrants were the chance theirs.”

— Victor Hugo

248. “The straight line, a respectable optical illusion which ruins many a man.”

— Victor Hugo

249. “Philosophy is the microscope of thought. Everything desires to flee from it, but nothing escapes it.”

— Victor Hugo

250. “A one-eyed man is much more incomplete than a blind man, for he knows what it is that’s lacking.”

— Victor Hugo