Victor Hugo - Collected Quotes

"A stand can be made against invasion by an army; no stand can be made against invasion by an idea." (Victor Hugo, "The History of a Crime", 1851–1852)

"Nihilism has no substance. There is no such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing." (Victor Hugo, "Les Misérables", 1862)

"Philosophy is the microscope of thought. Everything desires to flee from it, but nothing escapes it." (Victor Hugo, "Les Misérables", 1862)

"[...] the small is great, the great is small; all is in equilibrium in necessity […]" (Victor Hugo, "Les Misérables", 1862)

"The straight line, a respectable optical illusion which ruins many a man." (Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, 1862)

"Who then understands the reciprocal flux and reflux of the infinitely great and the infinitely small, the echoing of causes in the abysses of being, and the avalanches of creation?" (Victor Hugo, "Saint Denis", 1862) 
"In Science, all tends to stir, to change, to form fresh surfaces. All denies, destroys, creates, replaces all. What was ground yesterday is put into the hopper again today. The colossal machine, Science, never rests. It is never satisfied; it is insatiable for improvement, of which the absolute knows nothing." (Victor Hugo, "William Shakespeare", 1864)

"Science seeks perpetual motion. She has found it: it is Science herself." (Victor Hugo, "William Shakespeare", 1864)


"Science has but the right to put a visa on facts; she should verify and distinguish." (Victor Hugo, "William Shakespeare", 1864)

"Science is ignorant, and has no right to laugh: a savant who laughs at the possible, is very near being an idiot." (Victor Hugo, "William Shakespeare", 1864)

"The unexpected ought always to be expected by Science. Her duty is to stop it in its course and search it, rejecting the chimerical, establishing the real." (Victor Hugo, "William Shakespeare", 1864)

"The mission of Science is to study and sound everything." (Victor Hugo, "William Shakespeare", 1864)

"An ant weighs upon the earth; a star can well weigh upon the universe." (Victor Hugo, "The Toilers of the Sea", 1866)

"Arithmetic, like the sea, is an undulation without any possible end." (Victor Hugo, "The Toilers of the Sea", 1866)

"Chance, if such a thing exists, is far-seeing." (Victor Hugo, "The Toilers of the Sea", 1866)

"Every fact is a logarithm; one added term ramifies it until it is thoroughly transformed. In the general aspect of things, the great lines of creation take shape and arrange themselves into groups; beneath lies the unfathomable." (Victor Hugo, "The Toilers of the Sea", 1866)

"One microscopic glittering point; then another; and another, and still another; they are scarcely perceptible, yet they are enormous. This light is a focus; this focus, a star; this star, a sun; this sun, a universe; this universe, nothing. Every number is zero in the presence of the infinite." (Victor Hugo, "The Toilers of the Sea", 1874)

"Phenomena may well be suspected of anything, are capable of anything. Hypothesis proclaims the infinite; that is what gives hypothesis its greatness. Beneath the surface fact it seeks the real fact. It asks creation for her thoughts, and then for her second thoughts. The great scientific discoverers are those who hold nature suspect." (Victor Hugo, "The Toilers of the Sea", 1874)

"Nature eludes calculation. Number is a grim pullulation. Nature is the thing that cannot be numbered." (Victor Hugo, "The Toilers of the Sea", 1874)

"To put everything in balance is good, to put everything in harmony is better." (Victor Hugo, "Ninety-Three", 1874)

"For true poetry, complete poetry, consists in the harmony of contraries. Hence, it is time to say aloud - and it is here above all that exceptions prove the rule - that everything that exists in nature exists in art." (Victor Hugo, "Dramas", 1896)

"Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing." (Victor Hugo, "Things of the Infinite: Intellectual Autobiography", 1907)