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 greatest victory is that over oneself.
The human heart is like a tree. It has roots, branches, and leaves. It grows, it blossoms, it bears fruit.
The true man of letters is a man of the world.
The beautiful is a manifestation of secret laws of nature, which, were they not revealed to us through the beautiful, would remain eternally hidden.
The greatest of all human follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness.
The word 'God' is for me the sum of all that is beautiful, good, and true.
The human mind is like a millstone, if you put nothing in it, it grinds itself.
The greatest pleasure of life is love.
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
The soul is a fire that must be kept burning.
Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved.
Initiative is doing the right thing without being told.
The word which is heard is never the word which is spoken.
Curiosity is one of the forms of feminine bravery.
Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.
The future has several names. For the weak, it is impossible; for the fainthearted, it is unknown; for the thoughtful and valiant, it is ideal.
When dictatorship is established, a revolution is inevitable.
Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.
Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.
The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.
Contemporaries of Victor Hugo
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Victor Hugo (1802–1885).