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.
"Plaidoyer contre la peine de mort" http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Plaidoyer_contre_la_peine_de_mort_-_Victor_Hugo [An argument against the death penalty], Assemblée Constituante, Paris (15 September 1848)
Victor Hugo: Frasi in inglese (pagina 14)
Victor Hugo era scrittore francese. Frasi in inglese.“And the navy, Papa, will come to Malta.”
Et la marine va, papa, venir à Malte.
Palindrome attributed to Hugo on the internet, but in no published sources yet found.
Disputed
“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
“God became a man, granted. The devil became a woman.”
Dieu s'est fait homme; soit. Le diable s'est fait femme!
Ruy Blas (1838), Act II, Scene V http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Ruy_Blas#ACTE_2_SCENE_5
Ce besoin de l’immatériel est le plus vivace de tous. Il faut du pain; mais avant le pain, il faut l’idéal.
" Les fleurs http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Proses_philosophiques_-_Les_Fleurs#IV," (ca. 1860 - 1865), from Oeuvres complètes (1909); published in English as The Memoirs of Victor Hugo, trans. John W. Harding (1899), Chapter VI: Love in Prison, part II
Statement of May 1848, as quoted in Paris Under the Commune : Or, Seventy-Three Days of the Second Siege (1871) by John Leighton
Attributed to Hugo in Old Gods Almost Dead : The 40-year Odyssey of the Rolling Stones (2001), by Stephen Davis, p. 557; but sourced to Illuminations by Arthur Rimbaud in Jaco : The Extraordinary and Tragic Life of Jaco Pastorius (2006) by Bill Milkowski, p. iii
Disputed
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
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 http://books.google.com/books?id=CT1BkrtaFlIC&pg=PA120&dq=%22There+is+now,+in+France,%22
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 http://books.google.com/books?id=idfUAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA187&dq=%22In+every+French+village+there+is+now+a+lighted+torch%22
Variants: There is in every village a torch: The schoolteacher/teacher. And an extinguisher: The priest/clergyman.
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.
Speech, "Le centenaire de Voltaire" http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Actes_et_paroles_-_Depuis_l%E2%80%99exil_-_1878#II_LE_CENTENAIRE_DE_VOLTAIRE, on the 100th anniversary of the death of Voltaire, Théâtre de la Gaîté, Paris (30 May 1878); published in Actes et paroles - Depuis l'exil (1878)
La musique...est la vapeur de l’art. Elle est à la poésie ce que la rêverie est à la pensée, ce que le fluide est au liquide, ce que l’océan des nuées est à l’océan des ondes.
Part I, Book II, Chapter IV
William Shakespeare (1864)
On résiste à l'invasion des armées; on ne résiste pas à l'invasion des idées.
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 http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Histoire_d%E2%80%99un_crime_-_Conclusion#X.
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.
Many of these paraphrases have a closer match in a passage from Gustave Aimard's earlier-published novel Les Francs-Tireurs (1861):
there is something more powerful than the brute force of bayonets: it is the idea whose time has come and hour struck
Original French: Il y a quelque chose de plus puissant que la force brutale des baïonnettes: c'est l'idée dont le temps est venu et l'heure est sonnée
Origine: [The Freebooters, Gustave, Aimard, (tr. unknown), 1861, London, Ward and Lock, 57, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/chi.087603619?urlappend=%3Bseq=67]
Origine: [Les Francs Tireurs, Gustave, Aimard, 1861, Paris, Amyot, 68, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.$b596684?urlappend=%3Bseq=76]
Aimer, c'est agir
Last words of his diary, written two weeks before his death, published in Victor Hugo : Complete Writings (1970), edited by Jean-Jacques Pauvert
Napoleon the Little (1852), Conclusion, Part Second, II
Napoleon the Little (1852)