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
God knows better than we do what we need.
Need is a low door which, when we must by stern necessity pass through, forces the greatest to bend down the most.
We need those who pray constantly to compensate for those who do not pray at all.
Art needs no spur beyond itself.
A queen, devoid of beauty is not queen; She needs the royalty of beauty's mien.
The need of the immaterial is the most deeply rooted of all needs. One must have bread; but before bread, one must have the ideal.
The soul has greater need of the ideal than of the real
There is nothing as exciting as an idea whose time has come
What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past
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.
Be like the bird that, pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings.
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.
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.