Top 500 Victor Hugo Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “A stout heart may be ruined in fortune but not in spirit.”

— Victor Hugo

352. “But when ill indeed, Even dismissing the doctor don’t always succeed.”

— Victor Hugo

353. “Blind is he who will not see!”

— Victor Hugo

354. “Water! pretending to be pure, thou resemblest false friends. Thou art warm at the top and cold at bottom.”

— Victor Hugo

355. “In my old age there is a coming into flower. My body wanes; my mind waxes.”

— Victor Hugo

356. “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

357. “Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers.”

— Victor Hugo

358. “The reduction of the universe to a single being, the expansion of a single being even to God, this is love.”

— Victor Hugo

359. “Every bad institution of this world ends by suicide.”

— Victor Hugo

360. “When God desires to destroy a thing, he entrusts its destruction to the thing itself. Every bad institution of this world ends by suicide.”

— Victor Hugo

361. “Promise to give me a kiss on my brow when I am dead. – I shall feel it.”

— Victor Hugo

362. “Are you afraid of the good you might do?”

— Victor Hugo

363. “The little people must be sacred to the big ones, and it is from the rights of the weak that the duty of the strong is comprised.”

— Victor Hugo

364. “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

365. “The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories that it has come to be disbelieved. Few people dare say nowadays that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet that is the way love begins, and only that way. The rest is only the rest, and comes afterwards. Nothing is more real than the great shocks that two souls give each other in exchanging this spark.”

— Victor Hugo

366. “He who contemplates the depths of Paris is seized with vertigo. Nothing is more fantastic. Nothing is more tragic. Nothing is more sublime.”

— Victor Hugo

367. “The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.”

— Victor Hugo

368. “The saints were his friends, and blessed him; the monsters were his friends, and guarded him.”

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

370. “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

371. “A doctor’s door should never be closed, a priest’s door should always be open.”

— Victor Hugo

372. “One can no more keep the mind from returning to an idea than the sea from returning to a shore. For a sailor, this is called the tide; in the case of the guilty it is called remorse. God stirs up the soul as well as the ocean.”

— Victor Hugo

373. “The soul does not give itself up to despair until it has exhausted all illusions.”

— Victor Hugo

374. “You are adorable, mademoiselle. I study your feet with the microscope and your soul with the telescope.”

— Victor Hugo

375. “The thirst for the Infinite proves infinity.”

— Victor Hugo

376. “A breath of Paris preserves the soul.”

— Victor Hugo

377. “Winter changes into stone the water of heaven and the heart of man.”

— Victor Hugo

378. “What says the law? You will not kill. How does it say it? By killing!”

— Victor Hugo

379. “Yes, instruction! Light! Light! Everything comes from light, and to everything it returns.”

— Victor Hugo

380. “Her soul trembled on her lips like a drop of dew on a flower.”

— Victor Hugo

381. “A certain amount of tempest is always mingled with a battle. Quid obscurum, quid divinum. Each historian traces, to some extent, the particular feature which pleases him amid this pell-mell.”

— Victor Hugo

382. “He left her. She was dissatisfied with him. He had preferred to incur her anger rather than cause her pain. He had kept all the pain for himself.”

— Victor Hugo

383. “If you are leaving that sorrowful place with hate and anger against men, you are worthy of compassion; if you leave it with good will, gentleness and peace, you are better than any of us.”

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

385. “I was always a lover of soft-winged things.”

— Victor Hugo

386. “You would have imagined her at one moment a maniac, at another a queen.”

— Victor Hugo

387. “Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization.”

— Victor Hugo

388. “The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. It is marvelous, yet simple.”

— Victor Hugo

389. “I’d like a drink. I desire to forget life. Life is a hideous invention by somebody I don’t know. It doesn’t last, and it’s good for nothing. You break your neck simply living.”

— Victor Hugo

390. “Right is right only when entire.”

— Victor Hugo

391. “In the domain of art there is no light without heat.”

— Victor Hugo

392. “Joy’s smile is much closer to tears than laughter.”

— Victor Hugo

393. “Nobody loves the light like the blind man.”

— Victor Hugo

394. “Loving is almost a substitute for thinking. Love is a burning forgetfulness of all other things. How shall we ask passion to be logical?”

— Victor Hugo

395. “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

396. “The cities make ferocious men because they may corrupt man. The mountain, the sea, the forest, make savage men; they development fierce side, but often without destroying the humane side.”

— Victor Hugo

397. “But alas, if I have not maintained my victory, it is God’s fault for not making man and the devil of equal strength.”

— Victor Hugo

398. “For dogs we kings should have lions, and for cats, tigers. The great benefits a crown.”

— Victor Hugo

399. “She was sad with an obscure sadness of which she had not the secret herself. There was in her whole person the stupor of a life ended but never commenced.”

— Victor Hugo

400. “The owl goes not into the nest of the lark.”

— Victor Hugo