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Victor Hugo

15 free books by Victor Hugo. 15 you can read right here.

Born 1802 in Besançon · Died 1885 in Paris

writer, novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, author · France · associated with Romanticism in France, freethought

Notable works: Les Misérables, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Les Contemplations, L'Art d'être grand-père, The Man Who Laughs

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Facts from Wikidata (Q535), retrieved 2026-09-26.

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Quotes from Victor Hugo’s books

Verified word for word in the text: each quote is copied exactly from the book’s text in this site’s reader (the Project Gutenberg e-text named under each book) and links to its passage; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against that text. How RedLectern is built.

Les Misérables

From Project Gutenberg e-text #135 (public domain in the USA).

Teach those who are ignorant as many things as possible; society is culpable, in that it does not afford instruction gratis; it is responsible for the night which it produces.

— Spoken by a character · IV. WORKS CORRESPONDING TO WORDS

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“It is nothing to die; it is dreadful not to live.”

— Spoken by a character · V. A NIGHT BEHIND WHICH THERE IS DAY

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Notre-Dame de Paris

From Project Gutenberg e-text #2610 (public domain in the USA).

The church of Notre-Dame de Paris is still no doubt, a majestic and sublime edifice.

I. NOTRE-DAMERead in context →

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