Tao Te Ching
Victor Hugo
1802 – 1885 CE
Literary pioneer, poet, and social justice provocateur
Romantic literature pioneer, poet, artist, and one of the greatest French writers; Victor Hugo’s work influenced most of the social and political issues of his time. His literary success opened doors into the political world and he became more and more involved in politics. He campaigned against capital punishment and social injustice, for more freedom of the press, free education for children, universal voting rights, and a “United States of Europe.” While his books helped create important cultural and social shifts, his political efforts led to exile, a condemnation from Napoleon III, and death threats from mobs outside his house. His political work on ending the death penalty, however, did lead to its abolition in Geneva, Portugal, and Colombia. Two plus million people walked in his funeral procession and today almost all French cities have named streets after him.
Lineages
French Humanism Poets Romanticist
Eras
Western
Romantacism (1800 – 1850 CE)Post-Romantic Age (1850 – 2018 CE)
Gilded Age (1860 – 1900 CE)
Victorian (1837 – 1901 CE)
American Civil War (1861 – 1865 CE)
Chinese
Qing dynasty (1644 – 1912 CE)Unlisted Sources
Cromwell, 1827
Histoire d'un crime, 1877
Le centenaire de Voltaire, 1878
Les Chatiments, 1853
Les Misérables
Les Misérables (1862)
Les Voix intérieures (1837)
Ninety-Three, 1874
NY Post, 1948
Opening address, Peace Congress, 1875
The Battle of Waterloo, 1878
The Future of Man
Thoughts, 1907
William Shakespeare, 1864
William Shakespeare, 1864)
Workman's Congress, 1879
Quotes by Victor Hugo (34 quotes)
“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.”
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“To love another person is to see the face of God.”
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“Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.”
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“Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”
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“Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.”
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“Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age.”
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“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.”
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“Homer is one of the men of genius who solve that fine problem of art — the finest of all, perhaps — truly to depict humanity by the enlargement of man: that is, to generate the real in the ideal.”
from William Shakespeare, 1864)
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“God manifests himself to us in the first degree through the life of the universe, and in the second degree through the thought of man. The second manifestation is not less holy than the first. The first is named Nature, the second is named Art.”
from William Shakespeare, 1864
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“poetry will take a great step, a decisive step, a step which, like the upheaval of an earthquake, will change the whole face of the intellectual world. It will set about doing as nature does, mingling in its creations—but without confounding them—darkness and light, the grotesque and the sublime; in other words, the body and the soul, the beast and the intellect; for the starting-point of religion is always the starting-point of poetry. All things are connected.”
from Cromwell, 1827
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“Reason is intelligence taking exercise; imagination is intelligence with an erection.”
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“You insist on the example [of the death penalty]. Why? For what it teaches. What do you want to teach with your example? That thou shalt not kill. And how do you teach thou shalt not kill? By killing.”
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“A day will come when a cannon will be a museum-piece, as instruments of torture are today. And we will be amazed to think that these things once existed!”
from Opening address, Peace Congress, 1875
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“A day will come when there will be no battlefields, but markets opening to commerce and minds opening to ideas. A day will come when the bullets and bombs are replaced by votes, by universal suffrage, by the venerable arbitration of a great supreme senate which will be to Europe what Parliament is to England, the Diet to Germany, and the Legislative Assembly to France.”
from Opening address, Peace Congress, 1875
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“In every French village there is now a lighted torch, the schoolmaster; and a mouth trying to blow it out, the priest.”
from Histoire d'un crime, 1877
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“Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. Of that divine tear and that human smile is composed the sweetness of the present civilization.”
from Le centenaire de Voltaire, 1878
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“In the twentieth century, war will be dead, the scaffold will be dead, animosity will be dead, royalty will be dead, and dogmas will be dead; but Man will live. For all there will be but one country—that country the whole earth; for all there will be but one hope—that hope the whole heaven.”
from Workman's Congress, 1879
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“Was it possible that Napoleon should win the battle of Waterloo? No! Why? Because of Wellington? No! Because of God! It was time that this vast man should fall. He had been impeached before the Infinite! He had vexed God! Waterloo was not a battle. It was the change of front of the Universe!”
from The Battle of Waterloo, 1878
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“Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.”
from Thoughts, 1907
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“To rise at six, to sleep at ten,
To sup at ten, to dine at six,
Make a man live for ten times ten.”
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“Philosophy is the microscope of thought. Everything desires to flee from it, but nothing escapes it.”
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“I am for religion, against religions.”
from Les Misérables
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“Revolution is the larva of civilization… When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right.”
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“People do not lack strength, they lack will… The ones who live are the ones who struggle; the ones whose soul and heart are filled with high purpose. Yes, these are the living ones.”
from NY Post, 1948
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“To know, to think, to dream... that is everything.”
from Les Chatiments, 1853
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“Nothing else in the world—not all the armies— is so powerful as an idea whose times has come... An invasion of armies can be resisted; an invasion of ideas cannot”
from The Future of Man
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“I represent a party which does not yet exist: the party of civilization. There will come from it first, the United States of Europe, then the United States of the World.”
from NY Post, 1948
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“Oh Virgil! Oh poet! Oh my divine master!
Victor Hugo,
”
from Les Voix intérieures (1837)
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“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.”
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“Anger may be foolish and absurd, and one may be irritated when in the wrong; but a man never feels outraged unless in some respect he is at bottom right.”
from Les Misérables (1862)
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“The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only.”
from Les Misérables
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