Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor Marie Hugo; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. He is considered one of the greatest and best-known French writers. In France, Hugo's literary fame comes first from his poetry and then from his novels and his dramatic achievements. Among many volumes of poetry, Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles stand particularly high in critical esteem. Outside France, his best-known works are the novels Les Misérables, 1862,...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth26 February 1802
CityBesancon, France
CountryFrance
Ask not the name of him who asks you for a bed. It is especially he whose name is a burden to him, who has need of an asylum (room).
It is in the name of Moses that Bellarmin thunderstrikes Galileo; and this great vulgarizer of the great seeker Copernicus, Galileo, the old man of truth, the magian of the heavens, was reduced to repeating on his knees word for word after the inquisitor this formula of shame: "Corde sincera et fide non ficta abjuro maledico et detestor supradictos errores et hereses." Falsehood put an ass's hood on science.
Ma vie est une énigme dont ton nom est le mot. (My life is an enigma, of which your name is the word.)
The guillotine is the ultimate expression of Law, and its name is vengeance; it is not neutral, nor does it allow us to remain neutral.
Sometimes he used a spade in his garden, and sometimes he read and wrote. He had but one name for these two kinds of labor; he called them gardening. ‘The Spirit is a garden,’ said he
The miserable's name is Man; he is agonizing in all climes, and he is groaning in all languages.
Do not ask the name of the person who seeks a bed for the night. He who is reluctant to give his name is the one who most needs shelter.
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.
The future has many names: For the weak, it means the unattainable. For the fearful, it means the unknown. For the courageous, it means opportunity.
I exist," murmurs someone whose name is Everyone. "I'm young and in love; I am old and I want rest; I work, I prosper, I do good business, I have houses to rent, money in State Securities; I am happy, I have wife and children; I like all these things and I want to go on living, so leave me alone."... There are moments when all this casts a deep chill on the large-minded pioneers of the human race.
The future has several names. For the weak, it is impossible; for the fainthearted, it is unknown; but for the valiant, it is ideal.
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not the invasion of ideas.
Anger may be foolish and obsurd, and one may be irritated when in the wrong; but a man never feels outraged unless in some respect he is at bottom right.
Progress is the life-style of man. The general life of the human race is called Progress, and so is its collective march. Progress advances, it makes the great human and earthly journey towards what is heavenly and divine; it has its pauses, when it rallies the stragglers, its stopping places when it meditates, contemplating some new and splendid promised land that has suddenly appeared on its horizon. It has its nights of slumber; and it is one of the poignant anxieties of the thinker to see the human spirit lost in shadow, and to grope in the darkness without being able to awake sleeping progress.