Victor Marie Hugo (1802–85) was a French poet, playwright, literary critic, and writer of religious and political essays. As the undisputed leader of French romanticism (Romantisme,) Hugo wrote such celebrated novels as Notre-Dame de Paris and Les Misérables.
Hugo’s father was one of Napoleon’s generals, and his mother was a traditional royalist. His parents’ political differences were the highlight of Hugo’s childhood and the basis of the lifetime evolution of his allegiance from the empire, to the monarchy, and then to the republic.
In his twenties, Hugo wrote the French Romantic novel Notre-Dame de Paris (1831; The Hunchback of Notre Dame.) Set in 15th century Paris during the reign of Louis XI, it tells a touching story of a gypsy girl named Esmeralda and a deformed and deaf bell-ringer named Quasimodo who loves her. The success of the book in France catapulted Hugo into great renown. He used his celebrity to criticize the autocratic regime of Napoleon III and encourage the French to revolt.
Napoleon III declared Hugo an enemy of the state. In 1851, just before soldiers arrived to arrest him at home, Hugo managed to flee the country in disguise. He lived in exile in Guernsey in the English Channel and wrote Les Châtiments (1853; Castigations,) a volume of aggressive invectives against the emperor.
It was also during his exile that Hugo wrote most of his magnum opus Les Misérables (1865.) Considered one of the greatest novels of the 19th century, Les Misérables is a profound saga of the endless battle between good and evil. It focuses on Jean Valjean, a poor peasant sentenced to 20 years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving sister and her kids. Hugo’s dominant themes of personal transformation, human rights, broken dreams, love, sacrifice, revolution, and redemption made Les Misérables instantly popular upon release.
By the time Hugo died in Paris at age 83, he was a national hero. Two million mourners joined his funeral procession from the Arc de Triomphe to the Panthéon, where he is buried.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Victor Hugo
Fashions have done more harm than revolutions.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Fashion
The convent, which belongs to the West as it does to the East, to antiquity as it does to the present time, to Buddhism and Muhammadanism as it does to Christianity, is one of the optical devices whereby man gains a glimpse of infinity.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Religion
History has its truth; and so has legend hers.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Truth
Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Attitude, Prayer
Each man should frame life so that at some future hour fact and his dreaming meet.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Planning, Dreams
Men hate those to whom they have to lie.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Lies
Sorrow is a fruit. God does not make it grow on limbs too weak to bear it.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Sorrow
It is the essence of truth that it is never excessive. Why should it exaggerate? There is that which should be destroyed and that which should be simply illuminated and studied. How great is the force of benevolent and searching examination! We must not resort to the flame where only light is required.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Exaggeration
Liberation is not deliverance.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Freedom
A saint addicted to excessive self-abnegation is a dangerous associate; he may infect you with poverty, and a stiffening of those joints which are needed for advancement—in a word, with more renunciation than you care for—and so you flee the contagion.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Saints
We may remark in passing that to be blind and beloved may, in this world where nothing is perfect, be among the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness. The supreme happiness in life is the assurance of being loved; of being loved for oneself, even in spite of oneself; and this assurance the blind man possesses. In his affliction, to be served is to be caressed. Does he lack anything?. no. Possessing love he is not deprived of light. A love, moreover, that is wholly pure. There can be no blindness where there is this certainty.
—Victor Hugo
Toleration is the best religion.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Acceptance, Religion, Tolerance
England has two books, one which she has made and one which has made her: Shakespeare and the Bible.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Religion, Bible
Popularity is glory’s small change.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Popularity
Popularity? It’s glory’s small change.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Popularity
As the purpose is emptied the heart is filled.
—Victor Hugo
No one knows like a woman how to say things which are at once gentle and deep.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Woman
People do not lack strength; they lack will.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Will, One liners, Will Power, Willpower
Close by the Rights of Man, at the least set beside them, are the Rights of the Spirit.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Humanity
Short as life is, we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Waste, Excess
I’m religiously opposed to religion.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Religion
One is not idle because one is absorbed. There is both visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil, to think is to do. The crossed arms work, the clasped hands act. The eyes upturned to Heaven are an act of creation.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Thought
Not being heard is no reason for silence.
—Victor Hugo
Death belongs to God alone. By what right do men touch that unknown thing?
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Death
Men are women’s playthings; woman is the devil’s.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Woman
From the oyster to the eagle, from the swine to the tiger, all animals are to be found in men and each of them exists in some man, sometimes several at the time. Animals are nothing but the portrayal of our virtues and vices made manifest to our eyes, the visible reflections of our souls. God displays them to us to give us food for thought.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Animals
Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Grace, Smile
There is a sacred horror about everything grand. It is easy to admire mediocrity and hills; but whatever is too lofty, a genius as well as a mountain, an assembly as well as a masterpiece, seen too near, is appalling.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Greatness & Great Things, Greatness
God created the coquette as soon as he had made the fool.
—Victor Hugo
Most commonly revolt is born of material circumstances; but insurrection is always a moral phenomenon. Revolt is Masaniello, who led the Neapolitan insurgents in 1647; but insurrection is Spartacus. Insurrection is a thing of the spirit, revolt is a thing of the stomach.
—Victor Hugo
Topics: Revolution
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