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

Each man should frame life so that at some future hour fact and his dreaming meet.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Planning, Dreams

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

Nothing awakens a reminiscence like an odor.
—Victor Hugo

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

Revolution is the larva of civilization.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Revolution

When a woman is speaking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Listening

We say that slavery has vanished from European civilization, but this is not true. Slavery still exists, but now it applies only to women and its name is prostitution.
—Victor Hugo

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Enthusiasm, Genius

Despots play their part in the works of thinkers. Fettered words are terrible words. The writer doubles and trebles the power of his writing when a ruler imposes silence on the people. Something emerges from that enforced silence, a mysterious fullness which filters through and becomes steely in the thought. Repression in history leads to conciseness in the historian, and the rocklike hardness of much celebrated prose is due to the tempering of the tyrant.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Tyranny

Close by the Rights of Man, at the least set beside them, are the Rights of the Spirit.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Humanity

Common sense is in spite of, not as the result of education.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Common Sense, Common Sense

He who every morning plans the transactions of the day and follows out that plan carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life. The orderly arrangement of his time is a like a ray of life which darts itself through all his occupations. But where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incident, chaos will soon reign.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Time, Time Management, Goals, Aspirations, Busy, Value of Time, Focus and Priorities, Planning

A mother’s arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Mothers, Mother

Which of our methods of measuring could we apply to this eddying mass that is the universe? In the presence of the profundities our sole ability is to dream. Our conception, quickly winded, cannot follow creation, that vast breath.
—Victor Hugo

Death belongs to God alone. By what right do men touch that unknown thing?
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Death

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

God created the flirt as soon as he made the fool.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Men & Women, One liners, Love

The greatest blunders, like the thickest ropes, are often compounded of a multitude of strands. Take the rope apart, separate it into the small threads that compose it, and you can break them one by one. You think, “That is all there was!” But twist them all together and you have something tremendous.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Mistakes

In each age men of genius undertake the ascent. From below, the world follows them with their eyes. These men go up the mountain, enter the clouds, disappear, reappear, People watch them, mark them. They walk by the side of precipices. They daringly pursue their road. See them aloft, see them in the distance; they are but black specks. On they go. The road is uneven, its difficulties constant. At each step a wall, at each step a trap. As they rise the cold increases. They must make their ladder, cut the ice and walk on it., hewing the steps in haste. A storm is raging. Nevertheless they go forward in their madness. The air becomes difficult to breath. The abyss yawns below them. Some fall. Others stop and retrace their steps; there is a sad weariness. The bold ones continue. They are eyed by the eagles; the lightning plays about them: the hurricane is furious. No matter, they persevere.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Obstacles, Difficulty

Do not ask the name of the person who seeks a bed for the night. He who is reluctant to give his name is the one who most needs shelter.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: The Poor, Poverty

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.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Debt

Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the grander view?
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Potential

As the purse is emptied, the heart is filled.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Charity, Wealth, Service, Giving, Kindness

Such is the remorseless progression of human society, shedding lives and souls as it goes on its way. It is an ocean into which men sink who have been cast out by the law and consigned, with help most cruelly withheld, to moral death. The sea is the pitiless social darkness into which the penal system casts those it has condemned, an unfathomable waste of misery. The human soul, lost in those depths, may become a corpse. Who shall revive it?
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Prison

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: Revolution, Revolutions

I’m religiously opposed to religion.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Religion

God created the coquette as soon as he had made the fool.
—Victor Hugo

No one ever keeps a secret so well as a child.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Secrets

Give to the people who toil and suffer, for whom this world is hard and bad, the belief that there is a better made for them. Scatter Gospels among the villages, a Bible for every cottage.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Bible

If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Guilt

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