Victor Hugo

“Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.”

“People do not lack strength they lack will.”

“We see past time in a telescope and present time in a microscope. Hence the apparent enormities of the present.”

“To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do.”

“I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes, - and the stars through his soul.”

“I am a soul. I know well that what I shall render up to the grave is not myself. That which is myself will go elsewhere. Earth, thou art not my abyss!”

“Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.”

“To love beauty is to see light.”

“A library implies an act of faith.”

“There is nothing like a dream to create the future.”

“Because one doesn't like the way things are is no reason to be unjust towards God.”

“Conscience is God present in man.”

“The word is the Verb, and the Verb is God.”

“Doing nothing is happiness for children and misery for old men.”

“Men like me are impossible until the day when they become necessary.”

“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.”

“Peace is the virtue of civilization. War is its crime.”

“An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.”

“There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time as come.”

“A mother's arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them.”

“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.”

“There are fathers who do not love their children; there is no grandfather who does not adore his grandson.”

“He, who every morning plans the transactions of the day, and follows that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through a labyrinth of the most busy life.”

“All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.”