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 mind is a strange thing. It works in secret, and can be a source of great joy or great sorrow.
Melancholy is the happiness of being sad.
The greatest power is often the most silent.
The world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.
There are no such things as small countries. All countries are great through the ideas they represent.
The wicked are always surprised to find ability in the good.
The soul's darkest hour is not when it is in despair, but when it is in doubt.
The book is a friend that never betrays.
To die is nothing; but to live, that is terrible.
The greatest masterpieces are not those that make the most noise.
The beautiful is a manifestation of the good.
The human heart is a marvelous thing, capable of great love and great hatred.
The poet is a world in a man.
The true paradise is the paradise lost.
The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.
To love is to act.
Life is a voyage. We are all on a journey, and the destination is not what matters, but the journey itself.
Art is a microscope which the artist fixes on the secrets of the soul, and shows them to the world.
The future has several names. For the weak, it is the impossible. For the faint-hearted, it is the unknown. For the thoughtful and the valiant, it is the ideal.
To die is nothing; to live is terrible.
Contemporaries of Victor Hugo
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Victor Hugo (1802–1885).