Idleness is the heaviest of all oppressions.
Victor Hugo

Indigestion is charged by God with enforcing morality on the stomach.
Victor Hugo

Initiative is doing the right thing without being told.
Victor Hugo

Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant.
Victor Hugo

It is by suffering that human beings become angels.
Victor Hugo

It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life.
Victor Hugo

It is most pleasant to commit a just action which is disagreeable to someone whom one does not like.
Victor Hugo

It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.
Victor Hugo

It is often necessary to know how to obey a woman in order sometimes to have the right to command her.
Victor Hugo

It is the end. But of what? The end of France? No. The end of kings? Yes.
Victor Hugo

Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization.
Victor Hugo

Joy's smile is much closer to tears than laughter.
Victor Hugo

Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.
Victor Hugo

Liberation is not deliverance.
Victor Hugo

Life is the flower for which love is the honey.
Victor Hugo

Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved.
Victor Hugo

Love is a portion of the soul itself, and it is of the same nature as the celestial breathing of the atmosphere of paradise.
Victor Hugo

Mankind is not a circle with a single center but an ellipse with two focal points of which facts are one and ideas the other.
Victor Hugo

Many great actions are committed in small struggles.
Victor Hugo

Men become accustomed to poison by degrees.
Victor Hugo