Victor Hugo

One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas.

Victor Marie Hugo (February 26, 1802 — May 22, 1885) is recognized as the most influential French Romantic writer of the 19th century and is often identified as the greatest French poet.

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I was mulling over the Quote . ‘ That nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come ‘ specially in view and in the spirit of nationality as reflected in the speeches and quotes of Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi. It seems that the Time of idea of ‘India under Narendra Modi’ has come. I therefore got curious as to who said it and Lo and behold, It was Victor Hugo, the Great French writer and Poet who has penned Les Miserables and The Hunchbavk of Notre Dame.

I started reading his other quotes and the man was most robust lover of Peace and Harmony and was a visionary.

See how has he spoken over Euthanasia in 19th Century and what he says about Harmony and how he foresaw the European Union. I could not resist sending you as an attachment his various quotes. So please enjoy reading as to how humanity always keeps itself reinventing and reinvigorating with such flowers of their time as Victor Hugo. My Salute to him.

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Quotes[edit]

I will be Chateaubriand or nothing.

You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea.

A day will come when there will be no battlefields, but markets opening to commerce and minds opening to ideas.

I am willing to die, I am not willing to kill.

To put everything in balance is good, to put everything in harmony is better.

There shall be no slavery of the mind.

The need of the immaterial is the most deeply rooted of all needs. One must have bread; but before bread, one must have the ideal.

I represent a party which does not yet exist: the party of revolution, civilization. This party will make the twentieth century. There will issue from it first the United States of Europe, then the United States of the World.

Social problems overstep frontiers. The sores of the human race, those great sores which cover the globe, do not halt at the red or blue lines traced upon the map.

· I will be Chateaubriand or nothing.

· Written at the age of 15 in one of his notebooks (c. 1817), as quoted in The Literary Movement in France During the Nineteenth Century (1897) by Georges Pellissier

· Christianity leads poetry to the truth.

· From Preface to Cromwell, 1827. [1]

· Ces deux moitiés de Dieu, le pape et l’empereur!

· These two halves of God, the Pope and the emperor.

· Hernani (1830), Act IV, Scene II [2]

· Dieu s’est fait homme; soit. Le diable s’est fait femme!

· God became a man, granted. The devil became a woman.

· Ruy Blas (1838), Act II, Scene V [3]

· Vous avez des ennemis? Mais c’est l’histoire de tout homme qui a fait une action grande ou crée une idée neuve. C’est la nuée qui bruit autour de tout ce qui brille. Il faut que la renommé ait des ennemis comme il faut que la lumière ait des moucherons. Ne vous en inquiétez pas, dédaignez! Ayez la sérénité dans votre esprit comme vous avez la limpidité dans votre vie.

· You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around everything that shines. Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats. Do not bother yourself about it; disdain. Keep your mind serene as you keep your life clear.

· Villemain (1845)

· Vous tenez à l’exemple [de la peine de mort]. Pourquoi? Pour ce qu’il enseigne. Que voulez-vous enseigner avec votre exemple? Qu’il ne faut pas tuer. Et comment enseignez-vous qu’il ne faut pas tuer? En tuant.

· 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.

· “Plaidoyer contre la peine de mort” [An argument against the death penalty], Assemblée Constituante, Paris (1848–09–15)

· Un jour viendra où il n’y aura plus d’autres champs de bataille que les marchés s’ouvrant au commerce et les esprits s’ouvrant aux idées. Un jour viendra où les boulets et les bombes seront remplacés par les votes, par le suffrage universel des peuples, par le vénérable arbitrage d’un grand sénat souverain qui sera à l’Europe ce que le parlement est à l’Angleterre, ce que la diète est à l’Allemagne, ce que l’assemblée législative est à la France! Un jour viendra où l’on montrera un canon dans les musées comme on y montre aujourd’hui un instrument de torture, en s’étonnant que cela ait pu être! Un jour viendra où l’on verra ces deux groupes immenses, les États-Unis d’Amérique, les États-Unis d’Europe, placés en face l’un de l’autre, se tendant la main par-dessus les mers, échangeant leurs produits, leur commerce, leur industrie, leurs arts, leurs génies, défrichant le globe, colonisant les déserts, améliorant la création sous le regard du créateur, et combinant ensemble, pour en tirer le bien-être de tous, ces deux forces infinies, la fraternité des hommes et la puissance de Dieu!

· 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.
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!
A day will come when we shall see those two immense groups, the United States of America and the United States of Europe, facing one another, stretching out their hands across the sea, exchanging their products, their arts, their works of genius, clearing up the globe, making deserts fruitful, ameliorating creation under the eyes of the Creator, and joining together, to reap the well-being of all, these two infinite forces, the fraternity of men and the power of God.

· Discours d’ouverture, congrès de la paix, [Opening address, Peace Congress], Paris (21 August 1849); published in Actes et paroles — Avant l’exil (1875)

· Il y a maintenant en France dans chaque village un flambeau allumé, le maître d’école, et une bouche qui souffle dessus, le curé.

· Histoire d’un crime. Déposition d’un témoin (1877), Deuxième Journée. La lutte, ch. III: La barricade Saint-Antoine

· Translation: There is now, in France, in each village, a lighted torch — the schoolmaster — and a mouth which blows upon it — the curé.

· T. H. Joyce and Arthur Locker (tr.), The History of a Crime: The Testimony of an Eye-Witness (1877), The Second Day, Chapter III, p. 120

· Translation: In every French village there is now a lighted torch, the schoolmaster; and a mouth trying to blow it out, the priest.

· Huntington Smith (tr.), History of a Crime (1888), The Second Day, Chapter III, p. 187

· Variants: There is in every village a torch: The schoolteacher/teacher. And an extinguisher: The priest/clergyman.

· Je n’entre qu’à moitié dans la guerre civile. Je veux bien y mourir, je ne veux pas y tuer.

· I only take a half share in the civil war; I am willing to die, I am not willing to kill.

· Histoire d’un crime (The History of a Crime) [written 1852, published 1877], Quatrième journée. La victoire, ch. II: Les Faits de la nuit. Quartier des Halles. Trans. T.H. Joyce and Arthur Locker

· On résiste à l’invasion des armées; on ne résiste pas à l’invasion des idées.

· Literal translations:

· One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas.

· One withstands the invasion of armies; one does not withstand the invasion of ideas.

· Histoire d’un Crime (The History of a Crime) [written 1852, published 1877], Conclusion, ch. X. Trans. T.H. Joyce and Arthur Locker [4]

· Alternative translations and paraphrased variants:

· One cannot resist an idea whose time has come.

· No one can resist an idea whose time has come.

· Nothing is stronger than an idea whose time has come.

· Armies cannot stop an idea whose time has come.

· No army can stop an idea whose time has come.

· Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come.

· There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.

· Waterloo! Waterloo! Waterloo! Morne plaine!

· Waterloo! Waterloo! Waterloo! Dismal plain!

· L’Expiation, from Les Châtiments (1853), Book V

· L’œil était dans la tombe et regardait Caïn.

· The eye was in the tomb and stared at Cain.

· La Conscience, from La Légende des siècles (1859), First Series, Part I

· Vous créez un frisson nouveau.

· You have created a new thrill.

· Letter to Charles Baudelaire (1859–10–06)

· Mettre tout en équilibre, c’est bien; mettre tout en harmonie, c’est mieux.

· To put everything in balance is good, to put everything in harmony is better.

· Quatre-vingt-treize (Ninety-Three) (1874), Book VII, Chapter V [5]

· Jésus a pleuré, Voltaire a souri; c’est de cette larme divine et de ce sourire humain qu’est faite la douceur de la civilisation actuelle.

· Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. Of that divine tear and that human smile is composed the sweetness of the present civilization.

· Speech, “Le centenaire de Voltaire”, on the 100th anniversary of the death of Voltaire, Théâtre de la Gaîté, Paris (1878–05–30); published in Actes et paroles — Depuis l’exil (1878)

· For four hundred years the human race has not made a step but what has left its plain vestige behind. We enter now upon great centuries. The sixteenth century will be known as the age of painters, the seventeenth will be termed the age of writers, the eighteenth the age of philosophers, the nineteenth the age of apostles and prophets. To satisfy the nineteenth century, it is necessary to be the painter of the sixteenth, the writer of the seventeenth, the philosopher of the eighteenth; and it is also necessary, like Louis Blane, to have the innate and holy love of humanity which constitutes an apostolate, and opens up a prophetic vista into the future. 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.

· Address to the Workman’s Congress at Marseille (1879)

· Was it possible that Napoleon should win the battle of Waterloo? We answer, No! Why? Because of Wellington? Because of Blücher? No! Because of God! For Bonaparte to conquer at Waterloo was not the law of the nineteenth century. 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!

· “The Battle of Waterloo”, reported in Oliver Ernesto Branch, ed., The Hamilton Speaker (1878), p. 53.

· C’est ici le combat du jour et de la nuit… Je vois de la lumière noire.

· This is the battle between day and night… I see black light.

· Last words (1885–05–22); quoted in Olympio, ou la vie de Victor Hugo by André Maurois (1954)

· There shall be no slavery of the mind.

· Quoted by Courtlandt Palmer, president of the Nineteenth Century Club of New York, while introducing Robert G. Ingersoll as a speaker in a debate, “The Limitations of Toleration,” at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City (1888–05–08); from The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll (Dresden Publishing Company, 1902), vol. VII, p. 217

· Lever à six, coucher à dix,
Dîner à dix, souper à six,
Font vivre l’homme dix fois dix.

· To rise at six, to sleep at ten,
To sup at ten, to dine at six,
Make a man live for ten times ten.