1,711 Quotes by Victor Hugo

Not seeing people allows you to think of them as perfect in all kinds of ways.

We should judge a man much more surely from what he dreams than from what he thinks.

Despotism is a long crime.

If you want to civilize a man, begin with his grandmother.

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.

We are in the hands of those gods, those monsters, those giants: our thoughts.

Is it not when the fall is the lowest that charity ought to be the greatest?

There is suffering in the light; in excess it burns. Flame is hostile to the wing. To burn and yet to fly, this is the miracle of genius.

Superstitions, bigotries, hypocrisies, prejudices, these phantoms, phantoms though they be, cling to life; they have teeth and nails in their shadowy substance, and we must grapple with them individually and make war on them without truce; for it is one of humanity's inevitabilities to be condemned to eternal struggle with phantoms.