There are no bad plants and no bad men; there…
Quote
There are no bad plants and no bad men; there are only bad cultivators.
The story behind this quote
These words are spoken by M. Madeleine, the name Jean Valjean takes after becoming a manufacturer and then mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer. Seeing local people pulling up nettles, he explains everything the plant could give: cloth as good as hemp, fodder for animals, a yellow dye. Neglected, the nettle becomes harmful, so it is killed. “How many men are like the nettle!” he says, before concluding with this sentence.
The reader knows what M. Madeleine keeps to himself: he was once treated as a weed, sent to the galleys for stealing a loaf of bread, until the kindness of Bishop Myriel changed his life. The sentence sums up the lesson of the novel: poverty and neglect are what make people guilty.
Victor Hugo published Les Misérables in 1862, during his exile on Guernsey, to plead the cause of the poor. Teachers and gardeners alike often repeat the line: no one is lost from the start, everything depends on the care they receive.
Original text
Il n’y a ni mauvaises herbes ni mauvais hommes. Il n’y a que de mauvais cultivateurs.
The source
Les Misérables, Volume I, book V, chapter III, 1862
Original text checked word for word in the work; the translation is by quotesay.
More quotes by Victor Hugo
Author
Victor Hugo
Poet, novelist and playwright, Victor Hugo dominated French literature in the 19th century. The leader of the Romantic movement, author of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Les Misérables, he was also a political figure who spent nearly twenty years in exile.
Quotes by Victor Hugo