Victor Hugo, in full Victor Marie Hugo (26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist. He is considered the most well-known French Romantic writer. In France, Hugo's literary fame comes first from his poetry but also rests upon his novels and his dramatic achievements. Among many volumes of poetry, Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles stand particularly high in critical esteem. Outside France, his best-known works are the novels Les Misérables, 1862, and Notre-Dame de Paris, 1831, (also known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame).
Though a committed royalist when he was young, Hugo's views changed as the decades passed; he became a passionate supporter of republicanism, and his work touches upon most of the political and social issues and artistic trends of his time. He is buried in the Panthéon.
Read more about Victor Hugo: Personal Life, Writings, Political Life and Exile, Religious Views, Victor Hugo and Music, Declining Years and Death, Last Will, Drawings, Memorials, Works
Famous quotes by victor hugo:
“To rescue from oblivion even a fragment of a language which men have used and which is in danger of being lost—that is to say, one of the elements, whether good or bad, which have shaped and complicated civilization—is to extend the scope of social observation and to serve civilization.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“Popularity? It’s glory’s small change.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“This century fulfills the office of road-laborer for the society of the future. We make the road, others will make the journey.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“When God desires to destroy a thing, he entrusts its destruction to the thing itself. Every bad institution of this world ends by suicide.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“Despots play their part in the works of thinkers. Fettered words are terrible words. The writer doubles and trebles the power of his writing when a ruler imposes silence on the people. Something emerges from that enforced silence, a mysterious fullness which filters through and becomes steely in the thought. Repression in history leads to conciseness in the historian, and the rocklike hardness of much celebrated prose is due to the tempering of the tyrant.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)