Victor Hugo Quotes

French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician1802–1885 45 quotes

Victor Hugo was a French Romantic author, poet, essayist, playwright, journalist, human rights activist and politician. His most famous works are the novels The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Les Misérables, and in France he is also renowned for poetry collections such as Les Contemplations.

He was at the forefront of the Romantic literary movement with his play Cromwell and his drama Hernani. He produced more than 4,000 drawings and campaigned for the abolition of capital punishment and slavery. A royalist in his youth, he became a passionate supporter of republicanism and served as both deputy and senator. When he died in 1885, his state funeral in the Panthéon was attended by over two million people. Les Misérables is his most quoted work in our library.
Most quoted works
  • Les Misérables 214
  • The Hunchback of Notre-Dame 12
  • Ninety-Three 9
  • The Man Who Laughs 3
  • Hugo's Works: William Shakespeare 2
French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician

What Is Love? I have met in the streets a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul

— Les Misérables

French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician

Love is the only future God offers.

— Les Misérables

French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician

If people did not love one another, I really don't see what use there would be in having any spring.

— Les Misérables

French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician

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

— Les Misérables

French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician

When the heart is dry the eye is dry.

— Les Misérables - anthology

French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician

where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and who can say which has the wider vision?

— Les Misérables

French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician

The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.

— Les Misérables

French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician

...Nobody knows like a woman how to say things that are both sweet and profound. Sweetness and depth, this is all of woman; this is Heaven.

— Les Misérables

French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician

Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over, this is recognised: that the human race has been harshly treated, but that it has advanced.

— Les Misérables

French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves—say rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

— Les Misérables

French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician

There is nothing like a dream to create the future.

— Les Misérables

French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician

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

— The Toilers of the Sea

French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician

It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.

— Les Misérables

French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician

In love there are no friends everywhere where there is a pretty woman hostility is open.

— Les Misérables

French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician

Release is not the same as liberation. You get out of jail, all right, but you never stop being condemned.

— Les Misérables

French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician

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

— Intellectual Autobiography: Ideas on Literature, Philosophy and Religion

French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician

To wipe out abuse is not enough; you have to change people's whole outlook. The mill is no longer standing, but the wind's still there, blowing away.

— Les Misérables

French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician

The beautiful is as useful as the useful." He added after a moment’s silence, "Perhaps more so.

— Les Misérables

French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician

People do not read stupidities with impunity.

— Les Misérables

French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician

Let us study things that are no more. It is necessary to understand them, if only to avoid them.

— Les Misérables

French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician

There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.

— Les Misérables

French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician

A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is invisible labor.

— Les Misérables

French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician

Phoebus de Chateaupers likewise came to a 'tragic end': he married.

— The Hunchback of Notre-Dame