Victor Hugo quotes - page 12

At certain epochs in history, the whole human race, from all points of the earth, fix their eyes upon some mysterious spot whence it seems that universal destiny is about to issue. (Victor Hugo)
At certain epochs of history, there are pleiades of great men; at other epochs, there are pleiades of vagabonds. But do not confound the epoch, the moment of Louis Bonaparte, with the 19th century: the toadstool sprouts at the foot of the oak, but it is not the oak. View quote
Victor Hugo
This was the work that the nineteenth century had done among men, and was continuing in glorious, fashion to do,-that century of sterility, that century of domination, that century of decadence, that century of degradation, as it is called by the pedants, the rhetoricians, the imbeciles, and all that filthy brood of bigots, of knaves, and of sharpers, who sanctimoniously slaver gall upon glory, who assert that Pascal was a madman, Voltaire a coxcomb, and Rousseau a brute, and whose triumph it would be to put a fool's-cap upon the human race. View quote
Victor Hugo
Let us not fall into the vulgar error, which is to curse and to dishonour the age in which we live. However deep the shame of the present, whatever blows we receive from the fluctuation of events, whatever the apparent desertion or the momentary lethargy of mental vigour, none of us... will repudiate the magnificent epoch in which we live, the virile age of mankind. View quote
Victor Hugo
Those who live are those who fight. View quote
Victor Hugo
When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age. View quote
Victor Hugo
A library implies an act of faith. View quote
Victor Hugo
Dear God! how beauty varies in nature and art. In a woman the flesh must be like marble; in a statue the marble must be like flesh. View quote
Victor Hugo
To contemplate is to look at shadows. View quote
Victor Hugo
Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause. View quote
Victor Hugo
Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come. (Victor Hugo)
The man who does not know other languages, unless he is a man of genius, necessarily has deficiencies in his ideas. View quote
Victor Hugo
As the purse is emptied, the heart is filled. View quote
Victor Hugo
What would be ugly in a garden constitutes beauty in a mountain. View quote
Victor Hugo
The wise man does not grow old, but ripens. View quote
Victor Hugo
Rhyme, that enslaved queen, that supreme charm of our poetry, that creator of our meter. View quote
Victor Hugo
Our life dreams the Utopia. Our death achieves the Ideal. View quote
Victor Hugo
The three great problems of this century; the degradation of man in the proletariat, the subjection of women through hunger, the atrophy of the child by darkness. View quote
Victor Hugo
Habit is the nursery of errors. View quote
Victor Hugo
A war between Europeans is a civil war. View quote
Victor Hugo
One is not idle because one is absorbed. There is both visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil, to think is to do. The crossed arms work, the clasped hands act. The eyes upturned to Heaven are an act of creation. (Victor Hugo)
The most powerful symptom of love is a tenderness which becomes at times almost insupportable. View quote
Victor Hugo
There are fathers who do not love their children; there is no grandfather who does not adore his grandson. View quote
Victor Hugo
Nations, like stars, are entitled to eclipse. All is well, provided the light returns and the eclipse does not become endless night. Dawn and resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul. View quote
Victor Hugo
We say that slavery has vanished from European civilization, but this is not true. Slavery still exists, but now it applies only to women and its name is prostitution. View quote
Victor Hugo