Victor Hugo Quotes That Will Inspire You to Live Your Best Life

1. A library implies an act of faith which generations, still in darkness hid, sign in their night in witness of the dawn."À qui la faute? (1872)

2. Are you what is called a lucky man? Well, you are sad every day. Each day has its great grief or its little care. Yesterday you were trembling for the health of one who is dear to you, today you fear for your own; tomorrow it will be an anxiety about money, the next day the slanders of a calumniator, the day after the misfortune of a friend; then the weather, then something broken or lost, then a pleasure for which you are reproached by your conscience or your vertebral column; another time, the course of public affairs. Not to mention heartaches. And so on. One cloud is dissipated, another gathers. Hardly one day in a hundred of unbroken joy and sunshine. And you are of that small number who are lucky! As for other men, stagnant night is upon them. Les Misérables

3. Be happy without picking flaws. Les Misérables

4. Every day has its great grief or its small anxiety. ... One cloud is dispelled, another forms. There is hardly one day in a hundred of real joy and bright sunshine. Les Misérables

5. Happiness lies for those who cry, those who hurt, those who have searched, and those who have tried for only they can appreciate the importance of people who have touched their lives.

6. I have been loving you a little more every minute since this morning. Les Misérables

7. It is not easy to keep silent when silence is a lie.

8. Marius and Cosette were in the dark in regard to each other. They did not speak, they did not bow, they were not acquainted; they saw each other; and, like the stars in the sky separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing upon each other. Les Misérables

9. Nobody knows like a woman how to say things that are both sweet and profound. Sweetness and depth, this is all of woman; this is Heaven. Les Misérables

10. Promise to give me a kiss on my brow when I am dead. --I shall feel it."She dropped her head again on Marius' knees, and her eyelids closed. He thought the poor soul had departed. Eponine remained motionless. All at once, at the very moment when Marius fancied her asleep forever, she slowly opened her eyes in which appeared the sombre profundity of death, and said to him in a tone whose sweetness seemed already to proceed from another world:--"And by the way, Monsieur Marius, I believe that I was a little bit in love with you. Les Misérables

11. Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing.

12. The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

13. The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only. Les Misérables

14. The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves—say rather, loved in spite of ourselves. Les Misérables

15. The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves—say rather, loved in spite of ourselves. Les Misérables

16. There are, as we know, powerful and illustrious atheists. At bottom, led back to the truth by their very force, they are not absolutely sure that they are atheists; it is with them only a question of definition, and in any case, if they do not believe in God, being great minds, they prove God. Les Misérables

17. This first glance of a soul which does not yet know itself is like dawn in the heavens; it is the awakening of something radiant and unknown. Les Misérables

18. Well, listen a moment, Monsieur Mayor; I have often been severe in my life towards others. It was just. I did right. Now if I were not severe towards myself, all I have justly done would become injustice. Should I spare myself more than others? No. What! if I should be prompt only to punish others and not myself, I should be a wretched indeed! - Javert to M. Madeleine Les Misérables

19. What Is Love? I have met in the streets a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul Les Misérables

20. When love has fused and mingled two beings in a sacred and angelic unity, the secret of life has been discovered so far as they are concerned; they are no longer anything more than the two boundaries of the same destiny; they are no longer anything but the two wings of the same spirit. Love, soar. Les Misérables

21. Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over, this is recognised: that the human race has been harshly treated, but that it has advanced. Les Misérables

22. You who suffer because you love, love still more. To die of love, is to live by it. Les Misérables

23. In joined hands there is still some token of hope, in the clinched fist none. The Toilers of the Sea

24. Man has a tyrant, ignorance. I voted for the demise of that particular tyrant. That particular tyrant has engendered royalty, which is authority based on falsehood, whereas science is authority based on truth. Man should be governed by science alone.""And conscience," added the bishop. "It's the same thing. Conscience is the quota of innate science we each have inside us. Les Misérables

25. More powerful than the mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.

26. Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent

27. Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing.

28. Should we continue to look upwards? Is the light in the sky one of those which will presently be extinguished? The idea is terrifying to behold, lost as it is in the depths, small, isolated, a pin-point, brilliant but threatened on all sides by the dark forces that surround it: nevertheless, no more in danger than a star in the jaws of the clouds. Les Misérables

29. Should we continue to look upwards? Is the light we can see in the sky one of those which will presently be extinguished? The ideal is terrifying to behold... brilliant but threatened on all sides by the dark forces that surround it: nevertheless, no more in danger than a star in the jaws of the clouds. Les Misérables

30. Sin is a gravitation. Les Misérables