1,711 Quotes by Victor Hugo

Great grief is a divine and terrible radiance which transfigures the wretched.

If you are leaving that sorrowful place with hate and anger against men, you are worthy of compassion; if you leave it with good will, gentleness and peace, you are better than any of us.

He who contemplates the depths of Paris is seized with vertigo. Nothing is more fantastic. Nothing is more tragic. Nothing is more sublime.

Primitive times are lyrical, ancient times epical, modern times dramatic. The ode sings of eternity, the epic imparts solemnity tohistory, the drama depicts life. The characteristic of the first poetry is ingeniousness, of the second, simplicity, of the third, truth.

The little people must be sacred to the big ones, and it is from the rights of the weak that the duty of the strong is comprised.

One cannot resist an idea whose time has come.

Wonderful nature has a double meaning, which dazzles great minds and blinds uncultivated souls. When man is ignorant, when the desert is filled with visions, the darkness of solitude is added to the darkness of intelligence; hence, in man, the possibilities of perdition

To be perfectly happy it does not suffice to possess happiness, it is necessary to have deserved it.

A stout heart may be ruined in fortune but not in spirit.