1,711 Quotes by Victor Hugo

Knowledge is a weight added to conscience.

The book which the reader now holds in his hands, from one end to the other, as a whole and in its details, whatever gaps, exceptions, or weaknesses it may contain, treats of the advance from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from falsity to truth, from darkness to daylight, from blind appetite to conscience, from decay to life, from bestiality to duty, from Hell to Heaven, from limbo to God. Matter itself is the starting-point, and the point of arrival is the soul. Hydra at the beginning, an angel at the end.

We are reassured almost as foolishly as we are alarmed; human nature is so constituted.

For, to make deserts, God, who rules mankind, Begins with kings, and ends the work by wind.

My childhood began, as everybody's childhood begins, with prejudices. Man finds prejudices beside his cradle, puts them from him a little in the course of his career, and often, alas! takes to them again in his old age.

Freedom in art, freedom in society, this is the double goal towards which all consistent and logical minds must strive.

where would the shout of love begin, if not from the summit of sacrifice?

To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.

God put in man thought; society, action; nature, revery.