Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

Quotes

• To be a saint is the exception; to be upright is the rule. Err, falter, sin, but be upright. To commit the least possible sin is the law for man. Sin is a gravitation.

• He who every morning plans the transaction of the day and follows out that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through the maze of the most busy life. But where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidence, chaos will soon reign.

• If suffer we must, let's suffer on the heights.

• Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart.

• There is nothing like dream to create the future. Utopia to-day, flesh and blood tomorrow.

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

• An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.

• The greatest happiness of life it the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

• What is grace? It is the inspiration from on high: it is love; it is liberty. Grace is the spirit of law. This discovery of the spirit of law belongs to Saint Paul; and what he calls "grace" from a heavenly point of view, we, from an earthly point, call "rigtheousness."

• The peasants of the Asturias believe that in every litter of wolves there is one pup that is killed by the mother for fear that on growing up it would devour the other little ones.

• Robspierre replied softly, 'the question is to know where is the enemy.' 'He is out there, and I have hunted him,' said Danton. 'He is within, and I am watching him,' said Robespierre.

• Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.

• Nothing discernable to the eye of the spirit is more brilliant or obscure than man; nothing is more formidible, complex, mysterious, and infinite. There is a prospect greater than the sea, and it is the sky; there is a prospect greater than the sky, and it is the human soul.

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

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

• Popularity? It is glory's small change.

• Babylon violated diminishes Alexander; Rome enslaved diminishes Caesar; massacred Jerusalem diminishes Titus. Tyranny follows the tyrant. Woe to the man who leaves behind a shadow that bears his form.

• The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.

• The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

• To love another person is to see the face of God.