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)
Love is the only thing that can save us.
The more I see of the world, the more I am convinced of the necessity of a great change.
To be great is to be misunderstood.
Liberty begins where ignorance ends.
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.
The beautiful is that which is in harmony with the good.
I am a man who has suffered much, but who has also loved much.
The soul's highest aspiration is to be free.
The greatest victory is that which is won over oneself.
To be loved is to be understood.
The poet is a prophet.
Revolution is the larva of civilization.
The human heart is a marvelous thing.
To live is to think.
The ideal is nothing but the truth at a distance.
The greatest crimes are not those that are punished, but those that are unpunished.
Love is a portion of the soul itself, and it is of the same nature as the soul.
The beautiful is always bizarre.
To be free is to be responsible.
The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
Contemporaries of Victor Hugo
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Victor Hugo (1802–1885).