Top 500 Victor Hugo Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “When two mouths, made sacred by love, draw near to each other to create, it is impossible, that above that ineffable kiss there should not be a thrill in the immense mystery of the stars.”

— Victor Hugo

352. “No religion but blasphemes a little.”

— Victor Hugo

353. “Humanity is identity. All men are the same clay. No difference, here below at least, in predestination. The same darkness before, the same flesh during, the same ashes after life. But ignorance, mixed with the human composition, blackens it. This incurable ignorance possesses the heart of man, and there becomes evil.”

— Victor Hugo

354. “From a political point of view, there is but one principle, the sovereignty of man over himself. This sovereignty of myself over myself is called Liberty.”

— Victor Hugo

355. “Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions.”

— Victor Hugo

356. “We are not loved by our friends for what we are; rather, we are loved in spite of what we are.”

— Victor Hugo

357. “Progress is not accomplished in one stage.”

— Victor Hugo

358. “A great artist is a great man in a great child.”

— Victor Hugo

359. “Despotism is a long crime.”

— Victor Hugo

360. “Let the one fight for his flag, and the other for his ideal, and let them both imagine that they are fighting for the country; the strife will be colossal.”

— Victor Hugo

Featured in: Country Quotes

361. “God blesses man, not for having found but for having sought.”

— Victor Hugo

362. “Too much improvisation leaves the mind stupidly void.”

— Victor Hugo

363. “France lost a great novel last night.”

— Victor Hugo

364. “The slightest contact with logic makes all false arguments disintegrate.”

— Victor Hugo

365. “The earlier works of a man of genius are always preferred to the newer ones, in order to prove that he is going down instead of up.”

— Victor Hugo

366. “This is a leviathan I am about to ship out to sea...”

— Victor Hugo

367. “A stout heart may be ruined in fortune but not in spirit.”

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

369. “Cheerfulness is like money well expended in charity; the more we dispense of it, the greater our possession.”

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

371. “Blind is he who will not see!”

— Victor Hugo

372. “The ideal and the beautiful are identical; the ideal corresponds to the idea, and beauty to form; hence idea and substance are cognate.”

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

374. “A benevolent malefactor, merciful, gentle, helpful, clement, a convict, returning good for evil, giving back pardon for hatred, preferring pity to vengeance, preferring to ruin himself rather than to ruin his enemy, saving him who had smitten him, kneeling on the heights of virtue, more nearly akin to an angel than to a man. Javert was constrained to admit to himself that this monster existed.”

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

378. “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

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

— Victor Hugo

380. “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

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

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

383. “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

Featured in: Strong Quotes

384. “An enormous fortress of prejudices, privileges, superstitions, lies, exactions, abuses, violences, iniquities, and darkness still stands erect in this world, with its towers of hatred. It must be cast down. This monstrous mass must be made to crumble. To conquer at Austerlitz is grand; to take the Bastille is immense.”

— Victor Hugo

385. “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

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

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

388. “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

389. “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

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

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

393. “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

394. “Right is right only when entire.”

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

397. “Notre-Dame de Paris is, in particular, a curious specimen of this variety. Each face, each stone of the venerable monument, is a page not only of the history of the country, but of the history of science and art as well.”

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

399. “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

400. “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