Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Victor Hugo (French Novelist)

Victor Marie Hugo (1802–85) was a French poet, playwright, literary critic, and writer of religious and political essays. As the undisputed leader of French romanticism (Romantisme,) Hugo wrote such celebrated novels as Notre-Dame de Paris and Les Misérables.

Hugo’s father was one of Napoleon’s generals, and his mother was a traditional royalist. His parents’ political differences were the highlight of Hugo’s childhood and the basis of the lifetime evolution of his allegiance from the empire, to the monarchy, and then to the republic.

In his twenties, Hugo wrote the French Romantic novel Notre-Dame de Paris (1831; The Hunchback of Notre Dame.) Set in 15th century Paris during the reign of Louis XI, it tells a touching story of a gypsy girl named Esmeralda and a deformed and deaf bell-ringer named Quasimodo who loves her. The success of the book in France catapulted Hugo into great renown. He used his celebrity to criticize the autocratic regime of Napoleon III and encourage the French to revolt.

Napoleon III declared Hugo an enemy of the state. In 1851, just before soldiers arrived to arrest him at home, Hugo managed to flee the country in disguise. He lived in exile in Guernsey in the English Channel and wrote Les Châtiments (1853; Castigations,) a volume of aggressive invectives against the emperor.

It was also during his exile that Hugo wrote most of his magnum opus Les Misérables (1865.) Considered one of the greatest novels of the 19th century, Les Misérables is a profound saga of the endless battle between good and evil. It focuses on Jean Valjean, a poor peasant sentenced to 20 years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving sister and her kids. Hugo’s dominant themes of personal transformation, human rights, broken dreams, love, sacrifice, revolution, and redemption made Les Misérables instantly popular upon release.

By the time Hugo died in Paris at age 83, he was a national hero. Two million mourners joined his funeral procession from the Arc de Triomphe to the Panthéon, where he is buried.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Victor Hugo

Sorrow is a fruit. God does not make it grow on limbs too weak to bear it.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Sorrow

Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Prayer, Attitude

Every bird that flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw.
—Victor Hugo

Shun idleness. It is a rust that attaches itself to the most brilliant metals.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Idleness, Laziness

Men have sight; women insight.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Woman

Popularity? It’s glory’s small change.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Popularity

Hope is a delusion; no hand can grasp a wave or a shadow.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Hope

Most commonly revolt is born of material circumstances; but insurrection is always a moral phenomenon. Revolt is Masaniello, who led the Neapolitan insurgents in 1647; but insurrection is Spartacus. Insurrection is a thing of the spirit, revolt is a thing of the stomach.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Revolution

Loving is half of believing.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Faith, Belief

Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Grace, Smile

To rescue from oblivion even a fragment of a language which men have used and which is in danger of being lost—that is to say, one of the elements, whether good or bad, which have shaped and complicated civilization—is to extend the scope of social observation and to serve civilization.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Language

When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Time, Age, Aging

Society is a republic. When an individual tries to lift themselves above others, they are dragged down by the mass, either by ridicule or slander.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Society

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.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Storytelling

Superstition, bigotry and prejudice, ghosts though they are, cling tenaciously to life; they are shades armed with tooth and claw. They must be grappled with unceasingly, for it is a fateful part of human destiny that it is condemned to wage perpetual war against ghosts. A shade is not easily taken by the throat and destroyed.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Superstition

There is no more sovereign eloquence than the truth in indignation.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Eloquence, Conversation

A HOUSE is built of logs and stone, Of piles and post and piers; A HOME is built of loving deeds, That stand a thousand years.
—Victor Hugo

God made only water, but man made wine.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Wine, One liners

Those who always pray are necessary to those who never pray.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Prayer

Reverie, which is thought in its nebulous state, borders closely upon the land of sleep, by which it is bounded as by a natural frontier.
—Victor Hugo

There is no such thing as a little country. The greatness of a people is no more determined by their numbers than the greatness of a man is by his height.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Greatness

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. God is awake.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Accomplishment, Courage, Bravery

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Enemy, Criticism, Independence, Originality

Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Adversity

The nearer I approach the end, the clearer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. It is marvelous yet simple. For half a century I have been writing my thoughts in prose, verse, history, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode and song – I have tried all; but I feel that I have not said a thousandth part of that which is in me. When I go down to the grave I can say like many others, “I have finished my day’s work” but I cannot say, “I have finished my life’s work”; my day’s work will begin the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley. It is an open thoroughfare. It closes in the twilight to open in the dawn. My work is only beginning; my work is hardly above its foundation. I would gladly see it mounting forever. The thirst for the infinite proves infinity.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Romance

There is a sacred horror about everything grand. It is easy to admire mediocrity and hills; but whatever is too lofty, a genius as well as a mountain, an assembly as well as a masterpiece, seen too near, is appalling.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Greatness & Great Things, Greatness

In this world, which is so plainly the antechamber of another, there are no happy men. The true division of humanity is between those who live in light and those who live in darkness. Our aim must be to diminish the number of the latter and increase the number of the former. That is why we demand education and knowledge.
—Victor Hugo

People do not lack strength; they lack will.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: One liners, Will, Willpower, Will Power

The brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over we realize this: that the human race has been roughly handled, but that it has advanced.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Revolutions, Revolution

Friend is sometimes a word devoid of meaning; enemy, never.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Friend, Time

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