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Quotes of the Day for 26 February 2005 - Victor Hugo

Victor Marie Hugo was born at Besançon, France on this day in 1802. The son of a general, his parents separated soon after his birth so that he could be raised and educated at Paris. He excelled in school and had his poetry published by age 13 and was honored by the French Academy at age 15 for a poem he had written. It was a turbulent age in France, and Hugo was often on the wrong side of the government, having plays shut down by the censors and being forced into exile for two decades during the reign of Napoleon III. His output of poetry, plays, and novels was prodigious, he is probably best known today for The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) and Les Miserables (1862).

A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil. To think is to do.

Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.

Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.

Have no fear of robbers or murderers. Such dangers are without, and are but petty. We should fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices the real murderers. The great dangers are within us. What matters it what threatens our heads or our purses? Let us think only of what threatens our souls.

Virtue has a veil, vice a mask.
     - All from Victor Hugo, 1802 - 1885

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