Victor Hugo Quotes

Every man is as heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse.

We are perfect. According to God, we are perfect, yet we know that we are sinners. We believe in the fact that we are both saints and sinners at the same time as we live in this world.

You are a man, not God; you are human, not an angel. How can you expect to remain always in a constant state of virtue, when this was not possible even for an angel of Heaven, nor for the first man in the Garden?

No man of honor ever quite lives up to his code, any more than a moral man manages to avoid sin.

Nobody's perfect. We're all just one step up from the beasts and one step down from the angels.

We are supposed to be on the side of goodness in the sense that we need it, not that we are it.

Virtue is despotic; life, reputation, every earthly good, must be surrendered at her voice. The law may seem hard, but it is the guardian of what it commands; and is the only sure defence of happiness.

There is nothing indulgent about the Moral Law. It is as hard as nails. It tells you to do the straight thing and it does not seem to care how painful, or dangerous, or difficult it is to do.

An innocent man is a sin before God. Inhuman and therefore untrustworthy. No man should live without absorbing the sins of his kind, the foul air of his innocence, even if it did wilt rows of angel trumpets and cause them to fall from their vines.

If the law commands me to sin, I will break it.

A man's conscience and his judgment is the same thing, and, as the judgment, so also the conscience may be erroneous.

Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose.

No man lives without fault.

We may pretend that we're basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise.

History contains heroes, but no one is a hero entirely, and no one is a hero for very long.

I think that there's a little bit of bad in all of us.

If you say morality is just what you like, you lose the metaphysical level of what in the history of philosophy is called 'categorical imperative.'

There are no perfect politicians - just as there are no perfect pastors or voters. We are all sinners in need of a Savior.

Morality is like a field of flowers beneath which the corpses are piled in a thousand layers. It is an evolved mechanism whereby the human organism proceeds through life sustained on every side by bonds of mutual interest.

Don't put wings on me; I am no angel.

You're not a bad person. But you sometimes do bad things. You know what that makes you? Human.

Duty is a better guide than stars or statutes.

The order of nature [is] that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue.

There is a moral law in this world which has its application both to individuals and organized bodies of men. You cannot go on violating these laws in the name of your nation, yet enjoy their advantage as individuals. We may forget truth for our conv

There is a universal moral law, as distinct from a moral code, which consists of certain statements of fact about the nature of man, and by behaving in conformity with which, man may enjoy his true freedom.