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.

“Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.”

— Victor Hugo

Men

All Quotes by Victor Hugo

“All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.”

— Victor Hugo

Power

“Forty is the old age of youth fifty the youth of old age.”

— Victor Hugo

Age

“Hope is the word which God has written on the brow of every man.”

— Victor Hugo

God

“Sorrow is a fruit. God does not make it grow on limbs too weak to bear it.”

— Victor Hugo

God

“Men become accustomed to poison by degrees.”

— Victor Hugo

Men

“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

Great

“Because one doesn't like the way things are is no reason to be unjust towards God.”

— Victor Hugo

God

“When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age.”

— Victor Hugo

Age

“We see past time in a telescope and present time in a microscope. Hence the apparent enormities of the present.”

— Victor Hugo

Time

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

— Victor Hugo

God

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

— Victor Hugo

God

“Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant.”

— Victor Hugo

Imagination

“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

“Architecture has recorded the great ideas of the human race. Not only every religious symbol, but every human thought has its page in that vast book.”

— Victor Hugo

Architecture

“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

“Jesus wept Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization.”

— Victor Hugo

Smile

“To love beauty is to see light.”

— Victor Hugo

Beauty

“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

Good

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

— Victor Hugo

Time

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

— Victor Hugo

Men