35 phrases by Victor Hugo to know his famous work

Who opens a school closes a prison.

There’s nothing as stupid as winning. True glory lies in convincing.

Initiative is doing the right thing without someone telling us to do it.

Let us admire the great masters, but let us not imitate them.

There is nothing like the dream to create the future. Utopia today, flesh and blood tomorrow.

Water that does not flow forms a swamp; the mind that does not work makes a fool.

The flesh is grey, the soul is flame.

Illusions support the soul as wings support the bird.

Between a government that does evil and the people that consent to it, there is a certain shameful complicity.

Melancholy is the happiness of being sad.

Reading is drinking and eating. The spirit that doesn’t read thins like the body that doesn’t eat.

Knowing exactly what part of the future can be introduced into the present is the secret of good government.

Being good is easy. The difficult thing is to be fair.

Music is in everything. A hymn comes out of the world.

Ye who suffer because ye love, love even more. To die of love is to live from it.

When we are young, we have triumphant mornings.

Nothing is more powerful than an idea that arrived at the right time.

Old people need affection as much as they need sunshine.

Poetry is all that is intimate in everything.

God is the invisible evidence.

The patient is the strongest.

Faith: this is what men need. Woe to those who believe nothing.

Art is a tool; the spirits are the workers.

The smaller the heart, the more hate it carries.

Everything that is dead as a fact lives on as a teaching.

Winter covers my head, but an eternal spring lives in my heart.

The beautiful is as useful as the useful. Maybe even more.

How close is remembrance to remorse?

Eating is a necessity of the stomach. Drinking is a need of the soul.

There always comes a time when it is not enough just to protest: after philosophy, action is indispensable.

Every man is a book where God himself writes.

There is nothing like the dream to create the future. Utopia today, flesh and blood tomorrow.

We would become wise by conserving in our thoughts the various residues of all human philosophies, as we would be healthy by swallowing all the bottoms of an old pharmacy bottle.

Having nothing to do is the happiness of children and the unhappiness of the elderly.

A single moment of love reopens the closed Eden.