Victor Hugo Quotes

Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent. He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two. 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. To put everything in balance is good, to put everything in harmony is better. It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live. Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent. Not being heard is no reason for silence. The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves. Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise. 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. Love is like a tree: it grows by itself, roots itself deeply in our being and continues to flourish over a heart in ruin. The inexplicable fact is that the blinder it is, the more tenacious it is. It is never stronger than when it is completely unreasonable. Laughter is sunshine, it chases winter from the human face. Those who do not weep, do not see. To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life. To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark. You ask me what forces me to speak? a strange thing; my conscience. People do not lack strength, they lack will. You who suffer because you love, love still more. To die of love, is to live by it. Life's great happiness is to be convinced we are loved. The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real that we exist, it is by the ideal that we live. Reason is intelligence taking exercise. Imagination is intelligence with an erection. He who opens a school door, closes a prison. There is nothing like a dream to create the future. Melancholy is the happiness of being sad. Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart. It is not easy to keep silent when silence is a lie. What a grand thing, to be loved! What a grander thing still, to love! Be like the bird that, passing on her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings. Being good is easy, what is difficult is being just. Common sense is in spite of, not the result of, education. Fashions have done more harm than revolutions. Each man should frame life so that at some future hour fact and his dreaming meet. Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come. Mothers arms are made of tenderness, And sweet sleep blesses the child who lies therein. Morality is truth in full bloom. Life is the flower for which love is the honey. A writer is a world trapped in a person. It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life. Love each other dearly always. There is scarcely anything else in the world but that: to love one another. Every blade has two edges; he who wounds with one wounds himself with the other. Be a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings. It is not enough to be happy, one must be content. If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away.

Victor Hugo

1802 - 1885