Most commonly revolt is born of material circumstances; but insurrection is always a moral phenomenon. Revolt is Masaniello, who led the Neapolitan insurgents in 1647; but insurrection is Spartacus. Insurrection is a thing of the spirit, revolt is a thing of the stomach.
~ Victor Hugo - [Rebellion]

Toleration is the best religion.
~ Victor Hugo - [Religion]

We are on the side of religion as opposed to religions, and we are among those who believe in the wretched inadequacy of sermons and the sublimity of prayer.
~ Victor Hugo - [Religion]

The brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over we realize this: that the human race has been roughly handled, but that it has advanced.
~ Victor Hugo - [Revolutions and Revolutionaries]

A saint addicted to excessive self-abnegation is a dangerous associate; he may infect you with poverty, and a stiffening of those joints which are needed for advancement -- in a word, with more renunciation than you care for -- and so you flee the contagion.
~ Victor Hugo - [Saints]

No one ever keeps a secret so well as a child.
~ Victor Hugo - [Secrets]

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

To rescue from oblivion even a fragment of a language which men have used and which is in danger of being lost --that is to say, one of the elements, whether good or bad, which have shaped and complicated civilization --is to extend the scope of social observation and to serve civilization.
~ Victor Hugo - [Language]

Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.
~ Victor Hugo - [Laughter]

A library implies an act of faith.
~ Victor Hugo - [Libraries]

Life is a flower of which love is the honey.
~ Victor Hugo - [Life and Living]

Life is a voyage.
~ Victor Hugo - [Life and Living]

Those who live are those who fight.
~ Victor Hugo - [Life and Living]

When a woman is speaking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes.
~ Victor Hugo - [Listening]

I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes -- and the stars through his soul.
~ Victor Hugo - [Love]

Life is the flower for which love is the honey.
~ Victor Hugo - [Love]

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather in spite of ourselves.
~ Victor Hugo - [Love]

To love another person is to see the face of God. [Les Miserables]
~ Victor Hugo - [Love]

The greatest blunders, like the thickest ropes, are often compounded of a multitude of strands. Take the rope apart, separate it into the small threads that compose it, and you can break them one by one. You think, ''That is all there was!'' But twist them all together and you have something tremendous.
~ Victor Hugo - [Mistakes]

Music expresses that which can not be said and on which it is impossible to be silent
~ Victor Hugo - [Music]