Quotes from Victor Hugo

To meditate is to labour; to think is to act. Folded arms work, closed hands perform, a gaze fixed on heaven is a toil.

Work is the law of life, and to reject it as boredom is to submit to it as torment.

Slaves would be tyrants were the chance theirs.

It is often necessary to know how to obey a woman in order sometimes to have the right to command her.

Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause.

Art moves. Hence its civilizing power.

The true artist can only labor con amore.

Beauty is as useful as the useful. More so, perhaps. (Le beau est aussi utile que l'utile. Plus peut-etre.)

The hatred of luxury is not an intelligent hatred. It implies a hatred of arts.

In the domain of art there is no light without heat.

The earlier works of a man of genius are always preferred to the newer ones, in order to prove that he is going down instead of up.

A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.

Verse in itself does not constitute poetry. Verse is only an elegant vestment for a beautiful form. Poetry can express itself in prose, but it does so more perfectly under the grace and majesty of verse. It is poetry of soul that inspires noble sentiments and noble actions as well as noble writings.

Work, which makes a man free, and thought, which makes him worthy of freedom.

He would give all of his clothes to his servant, admonishing him NOT to return them until he had completed his day's work.

Let us leave to the brain what belongs to it, and agree that the work of the men of genius is of the superhuman, the offspring of man.

Thought is the work of the intellect, reverie is its self-indulgence. To substitute day-dreaming for thought is to confuse a poison with a source of nourishment.

Sublime upon sublime scarcely presents a contrast, and we need a little rest from everything, even the beautiful.

The ideal and the beautiful are identical; the ideal corresponds to the idea, and beauty to form; hence idea and substance are cognate.

Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age.

The first symptom of love in a young man is shyness; the first symptom in a woman, it's boldness.

Toleration is the best religion.

Our life dreams the Utopia. Our death achieves the Ideal.

Lifes greatest happiness is to be convinced that we are loved.