The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we…
Quote
The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
The story behind this quote
The passage comes early in Les Misérables, in the chapter “M. Madeleine in mourning”. Jean Valjean, now living as M. Madeleine, learns that Bishop Myriel, the man who saved him, has died. Hugo then tells of the old bishop’s last years, when he had gone blind and was cared for by his sister, and pauses on a particular kind of happiness: to be blind and to be loved.
Someone who can no longer see, Hugo writes, measures affection by presence: the rustle of a dress, steps coming and going, a voice singing. The sentence follows, and Hugo concludes that to have love is not to lose the light.
Hugo began the novel in the 1840s and finished it in exile on Guernsey; it was published in 1862 and was an immediate, immense success. Taken out of its context, the sentence has become one of the most beautiful definitions of love: to be loved not for our qualities, but in spite of our faults.
Original text
Le suprême bonheur de la vie, c’est la conviction qu’on est aimé ; aimé pour soi-même, disons mieux, aimé malgré soi-même.
The source
Les Misérables, Volume I, book V, chapter IV, 1862
Original text checked word for word in the work; the translation is by quotesay.
More quotes by Victor Hugo
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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