Parenting & Family Quote by Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo’s line is a sly reversal of adult smugness: we tend to imagine children as leaky vessels, blurting out whatever crosses their minds, yet Hugo insists the opposite. The wit lands because it’s observational rather than sentimental. A child can be indiscreet about the wrong things (the awkward truth at dinner) while being fiercely disciplined about the right ones (the pact with a friend, the hiding place, the gift, the crush). Secrecy isn’t just a moral skill here; it’s a survival skill inside a world run by bigger people.

The subtext is about power. Adults control language, rules, and consequences, so children develop their own small sovereignties: private games, coded alliances, selective silence. Keeping a secret becomes a way to claim agency in a system where they’re routinely surveilled, corrected, and interpreted. Hugo, a novelist obsessed with social hierarchies and the quiet violence of institutions, understands how the powerless become experts at concealment. When you don’t own the room, you learn to own the information.

There’s also a darker edge: children keep secrets not only out of loyalty, but out of fear. The line glints with charm, but it brushes against the reality that kids can be trained into silence, carrying burdens adults prefer not to see. Hugo’s intent, then, isn’t merely to praise childhood virtue; it’s to expose the adult fantasy that innocence equals transparency. In Hugo’s world, innocence is often strategic.