These Les Miserables quotes by Victor Hugo will instantly lift you up and make you feel better.
Victor Hugo was born on February 26, 1802, was a French poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, and dramatist of the Romantic movement who is best known for his poetic drama and novel “Les Misérables” (1862), and “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame” (1831). In France, Hugo became famous first for his poetry and then for his novels.
He was the third son of a family that had been ruined by Napoleon’s Wars. His father was a general in the French Revolutionary Wars and so as a result the family moved around for much of his youth.
When Hugo was only 18, he moved in with his mother 18 rue des Petits-Augustins the following year and began attending law school. He married his old love, Adele Foucher, in 1822 with whom he had five children.
He produced more than 4,000 drawings in his lifetime and also campaigned for many different social causes such as the abolition of capital punishment.
Victor Hugo died on 22 May 1885 due to pneumonia at the age of 83.
Les Misérables is a French historical classic novel by Victor Hugo, published in 1862, that is considered one of the greatest novels of the 19th century. Set in Paris during the French Revolution, it depicts the story of Jean Valjean, a Frenchman imprisoned for stealing bread, and his struggle for redemption.
He breaks parole and spends several years on the run from the police, who are in pursuit because of his parole violation. After many years, he becomes a successful mayor and saves a boy from committing suicide. The story follows many events for you to love and get inspired.
Here we are sharing a collection of Les Miserables quotes by Victor Hugo to remind you about just how much the human spirit can overcome.
Victor Hugo Quotes From Book Les Miserables
“He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“What Is Love? I have met in the streets a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“To love another person is to see the face of God.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“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 have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Not being heard is no reason for silence.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Laughter is sunshine, it chases winter from the human face.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“As for methods of prayer, all are good, as long as they are sincere.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Victor Hugo Les Miserables Quotes
“I think, therefore I doubt.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Loving is almost a substitute for thinking. Love is a burning forgetfulness of all other things. How shall we ask passion to be logical?”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“What a great thing, to be loved! What a greater thing still, to love! The heart becomes heroic through passion…if no one loved, the sun would go out.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Those who do not weep, do not see.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“If I speak, I am condemned.
If I stay silent, I am damned!”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“You who suffer because you love, love still more. To die of love, is to live by it.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“You ask me what forces me to speak? a strange thing; my conscience.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“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.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“There is nothing like a dream to create the future.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Les Miserables Book Quotes
“A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is invisible labor.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Life’s great happiness is to be convinced we are loved.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“He was fond of books, for they are cool and sure friends”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“The future has several names. For the weak, it is impossible; for the fainthearted, it is unknown; but for the valiant, it is ideal.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“When love has fused and mingled two beings in a sacred and angelic unity, the secret of life has been discovered so far as they are concerned; they are no longer anything more than the two boundaries of the same destiny; they are no longer anything but the two wings of the same spirit. Love, soar.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Love is the foolishness of men, and the wisdom of God.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Before him he saw two roads, both equally straight; but he did see two; and that terrified him–he who had never in his life known anything but one straight line. And, bitter anguish, these two roads were contradictory.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“I have been loving you a little more every minute since this morning.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Quotes From Les Miserables Book
“Nobody knows like a woman how to say things that are both sweet and profound. Sweetness and depth, this is all of woman; this is Heaven.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Love has no middle term; either it destroys, or it saves. All human destiny is this dilemma. This dilemma, destruction or salvation, no fate proposes more inexorably than love. Love is life, if it is not death. Cradle; coffin, too. The same sentiment says yes and no in the human heart. Of all the things God has made, the human heart is the one that sheds most light, and alas! most night.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“There is something more terrible than a hell of suffering–a hell of boredom. ”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“To die for lack of love is horrible. The asphyxia of the soul.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Let us study things that are no more. It is necessary to understand them, if only to avoid them.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving. The great acts of love are done by those who are habitually performing small acts of kindness. We pardon to the extent that we love. Love is knowing that even when you are alone, you will never be lonely again. & great happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved. Loved for ourselves. & even loved in spite of ourselves.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“The soul helps the body, and at certain moments raises it. It is the only bird that sustains its cage.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Not seeing people permits us to imagine them with every perfection.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“If people did not love one another, I really don’t see what use there would be in having any spring.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Quotes From Les Miserables Musical
“If you wish to understand what Revolution is, call it Progress; and if you wish to understand what Progress is, call it Tomorrow.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Let us sacrifice one day to gain perhaps a whole life.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“There are no weeds, and no worthless men. There are only bad farmers.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness. (Monseigneur Bienvenu in _Les Miserables_)”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Diamonds are found only in the dark bowels of the earth; truths are found only in the depths of thought. It seemed to him that after descending into those depths after long groping in the blackest of this darkness, he had at last found one of these diamonds, one of these truths, and that he held it in his hand; and it blinded him to look at it.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“But listen, there will be more joy in heaven over the tears of a repentant sinner than over the white robes of a hundred just men.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Nobody loves the light like the blind man.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“The first symptom of true love in a man is timidity, in a young woman, boldness. This is surprising, and yet nothing is more simple. It is the two sexes tending to approach each other and assuming each the other’s qualities.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves—say rather, loved in spite of ourselves.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“What is said about men often has as much influence upon their lives, and especially upon their destinies, as what they do.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Victor Hugo Les Miserables Love Quotes
“We pray together, we are afraid together, and then we go to sleep. Even if Satan came into the house, no one would interfere. After all, what is there to fear in this house? There is always one with us who is the strongest. Satan may visit our house, but the good Lord lives here.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“For there are many great deeds done in the small struggles of life.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“He did not study God; he was dazzled by him.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“The beautiful is as useful as the useful.” He added after a moment’s silence, “Perhaps more so.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Have no fear of robbers or murderers. They are external dangers, petty dangers. We should fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices the real murderers. The great dangers are within us. Why worry about what threatens our heads or our purses? Let us think instead of what threatens our souls.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Love is the only future God offers.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“I’d like a drink. I desire to forget life. Life is a hideous invention by somebody I don’t know. It doesn’t last, and it’s good for nothing. You break your neck simply living.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“The poor man shuddered, overflowed with an angelic joy; he declared in his transport that this would last through life; he said to himself that he really had not suffered enough to deserve such radiant happiness, and he thanked God, in the depths of his soul, for having permitted that he, a miserable man, should be so loved by this innocent being.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Faith is necessary to men; woe to him who believes in nothing!”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Every bird that flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Best Victor Hugo Quotes From Les Miserables Book
“He loved books; books are cold but safe friends.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“As with stomachs, we should pity minds that do not eat.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Can human nature be so entirely transformed inside and out? Can man, created by God, be made wicked by man? Can a soul be so completely changed by its destiny, and turn evil when its fate is evil? Can the heart become distorted, contract incurable deformities and incurable infirmities, under the pressure of disproportionate grief, like the spinal column under a low ceiling? Is there not in every human soul a primitive spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this world and immortal in the next, which can be developed by goodness, kindled, lit up, and made to radiate, and which evil can never entirely extinguish.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“God knows better than we do what we need.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Life is a theatre set in which there are but few practicable entrances.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“The realities of life do not allow themselves to be forgotten.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“This first glance of a soul which does not yet know itself is like dawn in the heavens; it is the awakening of something radiant and unknown.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Success is an ugly thing. Men are deceived by its false resemblances to merit…. They confound the brilliance of the firmament with the star-shaped footprints of a duck in the mud.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Forget not, never forget that you have promised me to use this silver to become an honest man…. Jean Valjean, my brother: you belong no longer to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I am buying for you. I withdraw it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God!”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“What happened between those two beings? Nothing. They were adoring one another.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Les Miserables Phrases
“Gentlemen of the human race, I say to hell with the lot of you.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“A man without a woman is like a pistol without a trigger; it is the woman who makes the man go off.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Sleep comes more easily than it returns.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“She loved with so much passion as she loved with ignorance. She did not know whether it were good or evil, beneficent or dangerous, necessary or accidental, eternal or transitory, permitted or prohibited: she loved.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“The quantity of civilization is measured by the quality of imagination.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“One can no more keep the mind from returning to an idea than the sea from returning to a shore. For a sailor, this is called the tide; in the case of the guilty it is called remorse. God stirs up the soul as well as the ocean.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“It was SHE. Whoever has loved knows all the radiant meaning contained in the three letters of this word ‘she.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Be happy without picking flaws.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Each of our passions, even love, has a stomach that must not be overloaded. We must in everything write the word ‘finis’ in time; we must restrain ourselves, when it becomes urgent; we must draw the bolt on the appetite, play a fantasia on the violin, then break the strings with our own hand. The Wise man is he who knows when and how to stop.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Should we continue to look upwards? Is the light we can see in the sky one of those which will presently be extinguished? The ideal is terrifying to behold… brilliant but threatened on all sides by the dark forces that surround it: nevertheless, no more in danger than a star in the jaws of the clouds.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Les Miserables Quotes About Life
“You are adorable, mademoiselle. I study your feet with the microscope and your soul with the telescope.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“The earth is a great piece of stupidity.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“There comes an hour when protest no longer suffices; after philosophy there must be action; the strong hand finishes what the idea has sketched.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“A doctor’s door should never be closed, a priest’s door should always be open.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over, this is recognised: that the human race has been harshly treated, but that it has advanced.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“To lie a little is not possible: he who lies, lies the whole lie.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“There is neither a foreign war nor a civil war; there is only just and unjust war.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“It is a terrible thing to be happy! How pleased we are with it! How all-sufficient we think it! How, being in possession of the false aim of life, happiness, we forget the true aim, duty!”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Are you afraid of the good you might do?”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“To pay compliments to the one we love is the first method of caressing, a demi-audacity venturing. A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Les Miserables Quotes About Love
“If you are stone, be magnetic; if a plant, be sensitive; but if you are human be love.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“We need those who pray constantly to compensate for those who do not pray at all.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“To destroy abuses is not enough; Habits must also be changed. The windmill has gone, but the wind is still there.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“The sadness which reigned everywhere was but an excuse for unfailing kindness.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Man lives by affirmation even more than he does by bread.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Children at once accept joy and happiness with quick familiarity, being themselves naturally all happiness and joy. ”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“So long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Miserables cannot fail to be of use.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Every day has its great grief or its small anxiety. … One cloud is dispelled, another forms. There is hardly one day in a hundred of real joy and bright sunshine.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“People weighed down with troubles do not look back; they know only too well that misfortune stalks them.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Whether true or false, what is said about men often has as much influence on their lives, and particularly on their destinies, as what they do.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Did you like these Les Miserables quotes?
Les Misérables was a really popular book in English-speaking countries and around the world when I was growing up (I read it in high school). It’s been adapted many times into films, plays, operas, and musicals.
We hope Victor Hugo’s writings from his famous book Les Misérables showcase many emotions such as love, beauty, and his deep humanitarian beliefs. We hope you get inspired by these Les Miserables quotes and learn something valuable from them.
Do share your thoughts with us in the comment section and tell us which one was your favorite from all of the Les Miserables quotes or if you want to ask any questions or have any query send them via Contact Us
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