The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves. – Victor Hugo Les Miserables, Volume 5, Chapter 4.
Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization. – Victor Hugo
We see past time in a telescope and present time in a microscope. Hence the apparent enormities of the present. – Victor Hugo
A society that admits misery, a humanity that admits war, seem to me an inferior society and a debased humanity; it is a higher society and a more elevated humanity at which I am aiming – a society without kings, a humanity without barriers. – Victor Hugo
Nothing else in the world… not all the armies… is so powerful as an idea whose time has come. – Victor Hugo
There is a sacred horror about everything grand. It is easy to admire mediocrity and hills; but whatever is too lofty, a genius as well as a mountain, an assembly as well as a masterpiece, seen too near, is appalling. – Victor Hugo
There have been in this century only one great man and one great thing: Napoleon and liberty. For want of the great man, let us have the great thing. – 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
A creditor is worse than a slave-owner; for the master owns only your person, but a creditor owns your dignity, and can command it. – Victor Hugo
Rhyme, that enslaved queen, that supreme charm of our poetry, that creator of our meter. – Victor Hugo
Well, for us, in history where goodness is a rare pearl, he who was good almost takes precedence over he who was great. – Victor Hugo
The man who does not know other languages, unless he is a man of genius, necessarily has deficiencies in his ideas. – Victor Hugo
Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees. – Victor Hugo
