V

Victor Hugo

85 quotes

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist widely considered one of the greatest French writers. His best-known works — *Les Misérables* and *The Hunchback of Notre-Dame* — are enduring classics that blend sweeping narrative with powerful social conscience. Hugo was also an outspoken advocate for social justice and human rights.

“Scepticism, that dry caries of the intelligence.”

— Victor Hugo

Intelligence

All Quotes by Victor Hugo

“Men become accustomed to poison by degrees.”

— Victor Hugo

Men

“The ideal and the beautiful are identical the ideal corresponds to the idea, and beauty to form hence idea and substance are cognate.”

— Victor Hugo

Beauty

“Religions do a useful thing: they narrow God to the limits of man. Philosophy replies by doing a necessary thing: it elevates man to the plane of God.”

— Victor Hugo

God

“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.”

— Victor Hugo

Art

“Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.”

— Victor Hugo

Men

“To love beauty is to see light.”

— Victor Hugo

Beauty

“Rhyme, that enslaved queen, that supreme charm of our poetry, that creator of our meter.”

— Victor Hugo

Poetry

“Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace.”

— Victor Hugo

Courage

“There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time as come.”

— Victor Hugo

Time

“Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.”

— Victor Hugo

Time

“Common sense is in spite of, not as the result of education.”

— Victor Hugo

Education

“Society is a republic. When an individual tries to lift themselves above others, they are dragged down by the mass, either by ridicule or slander.”

— Victor Hugo

Society

“Civil war? What does that mean? Is there any foreign war? Isn't every war fought between men, between brothers?”

— Victor Hugo

Men

“A faith is a necessity to a man. Woe to him who believes in nothing.”

— Victor Hugo

Faith

“Peace is the virtue of civilization. War is its crime.”

— Victor Hugo

Peace

“Indigestion is charged by God with enforcing morality on the stomach.”

— Victor Hugo

God

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

— Victor Hugo

God

“The word is the Verb, and the Verb is God.”

— Victor Hugo

God

“I am a soul. I know well that what I shall render up to the grave is not myself. That which is myself will go elsewhere. Earth, thou art not my abyss!”

— Victor Hugo

Art

“What is history? An echo of the past in the future a reflex from the future on the past.”

— Victor Hugo

Future