Quotes by Victor Hugo

Was it possible that Napoleon should win the battle of Waterloo? We answer, No! Why? Because of Wellington? Because of Blucher? No! Because of God! For Bonaparte to conquer at Waterloo was not the law of the nineteenth century. It was time that this vast man should fall. He had been impeached before the Infinite! He had vexed God! Waterloo was not a battle. It was the change of front of the Universe!

— Victor Hugo

Wisdom

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

Life

Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.

— Victor Hugo

Life

Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.

— Victor Hugo

Wisdom

When a woman is talking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes.

— Victor Hugo

Wisdom

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.

— Victor Hugo

Wisdom

How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said.

— Victor Hugo

Wisdom

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

— Victor Hugo

Happiness

A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.

— Victor Hugo

Wisdom

Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.

— Victor Hugo

Wisdom

Life is the flower for which love is the honey.

— Victor Hugo

Love

Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age.

— Victor Hugo

Wisdom

Initiative is doing the right thing without being told.

— Victor Hugo

Wisdom

Perseverance, secret of all triumphs.

— Victor Hugo

Wisdom

Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings.

— Victor Hugo

Wisdom

When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age.

— Victor Hugo

Happiness

All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.

— Victor Hugo

Life

When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right.

— Victor Hugo

Wisdom

Virtue has a veil, vice a mask.

— Victor Hugo

Wisdom

Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant.

— Victor Hugo

Wisdom

To love beauty is to see light.

— Victor Hugo

Love

To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do.

— Victor Hugo

Wisdom

The mountains, the forest, and the sea, render men savage; they develop the fierce, but yet do not destroy the human.

— Victor Hugo

Life

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

— Victor Hugo

Love