Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor Marie Hugo; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. He is considered one of the greatest and best-known French writers. In France, Hugo's literary fame comes first from his poetry and then from his novels and his dramatic achievements. Among many volumes of poetry, Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles stand particularly high in critical esteem. Outside France, his best-known works are the novels Les Misérables, 1862,...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth26 February 1802
CityBesancon, France
CountryFrance
Love that is not jealous is neither true nor pure.
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.
Love is jealous, and ingenious in self-torture in proportion as it is pure and intense.
Death has its revelations: the great sorrows which open the heart open the mind as well; light comes to us with our grief. As for me, I have faith; I believe in a future life. How could I do otherwise? My daughter was a soul; I saw this soul. I touched it, so to speak.
What Shakespeare was able to do in English he would certainly not have done in French.
There are thoughts which are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the posture of the body, the soul is on its knees.
The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather in spite of ourselves.
Thought is more than a right - it is the very breath of man. Whoever fetters thought attacks man himself. To speak, to write, to publish, are things, so far as the right is concerned, absolutely identical. They are the ever-enlarging circles of intelligence in action; they are the sonorous waves of thought.
There is in every village a torch - the teacher; and an extinguisher- the clergyman
The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories that it has come to be disbelieved. Few people daresay nowadays that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at eachother. Yet that is the way love begins, and only that way.
Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the grander view?
Have no fear of robbers or murderers. They are external dangers, petty dangers. We should fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices the real murders. The great dangers are within us. Why worry about what threatens our heads or purses? Let us think instead of what threatens our souls.
What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past
Be like the bird that, pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings.