Top 500 Victor Hugo Quotes (2025 Update)
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351. “Despotism is a long crime.”

— Victor Hugo

352. “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

353. “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

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

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

359. “Blind is he who will not see!”

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

362. “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

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

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

366. “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

367. “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

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

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

370. “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

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

— Victor Hugo

372. “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

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

— Victor Hugo

374. “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

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

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

378. “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

379. “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

380. “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

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

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

386. “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

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

— Victor Hugo

388. “Right is right only when entire.”

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

390. “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

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

— Victor Hugo

392. “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

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

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo

396. “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

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

— Victor Hugo

398. “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

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

— Victor Hugo

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

— Victor Hugo