Victor Hugo
Les Misérables, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
Most quoted
"To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy then is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness."
— from Letter to Juliette Drouet
"The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings fell in love because they looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only."
— from Les Misérables, 1862
"When love has fused and mingled two beings in a sacred and angelic unity, they have found the secret of life; they are no longer anything but the two boundaries of the same ideal; they are no longer anything but two wings of the same spirit. Love, soar!"
— from Les Misérables, 1862
All quotes by Victor Hugo (260)
The more I study, the more I am convinced that the world is not a machine, but a living being.
The greatest of all weaknesses is the fear of appearing weak.
The greatest of all crimes is to do nothing.
The greatest of all pleasures is to do good.
The greatest of all virtues is charity.
The greatest of all truths is that there is no truth.
Life's great happiness is to be convinced we are loved.
The future has several names. For the weak, it is impossible; for the fainthearted, it is unknown; but for the valiant, it is ideal.
Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
The mountains, the forest, and the sea, render men savage; they develop the fierce, but yet do not destroy the human.
The first symptom of true love in a man is timidity, in a girl it is boldness.
Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace.
The paradise of the rich is made out of the hell of the poor.
A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in—what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.
One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas.
The liberty of one citizen ends where the liberty of another citizen begins.
The human body is only appearance and hides our reality. Reality is the soul.
To reform a man, you must begin with his grandmother.
The ox suffers, the cart complains.
The beautiful is as useful as the useful. More so, perhaps.
Contemporaries of Victor Hugo
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Victor Hugo (1802–1885).