“Success is an ugly thing. Men are deceived by its false resemblances to merit…. They confound the brilliance of the firmament with the star-shaped footprints of a duck in the mud.”

— Victor Hugo , book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Success is an ugly thing. Men are deceived by its false resemblances to merit…. They confound the brilliance of the fir…" by Victor Hugo?

Victor Hugo 308

French poet, novelist, and dramatist 1802–1885

Related quotes

“This object, which somewhat resembles a flight of wild ducks in shape, is a gathering of minute stars.”

William Henry Smyth (1788–1865) English naval officer and hydrographer

Of the M11 star cluster, which is now known as the "Wild Duck" cluster.
A Cycle of Celestial Objects, 1881 reprint, p. 544.

“Success always leaves footprints.”

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor

“Two men looked out from prison bars,
One saw the mud, the other saw stars.”

Dale Carnegie book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

Source: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

“Pope abounds in quotable things, chiefly from his habit of making every line rest on its own merits—a circumstance that accounts, in its turn, for the strong resemblance his couplets bear to each other.”

Samuel Laman Blanchard (1804–1845) British author and journalist

"Quotations".
Sketches from Life (1846)

“These things and deeds are diametrically opposed: they are as distinct as is vice from virtue. Men too often confound them: they should not be confounded”

Charlotte Brontë book Jane Eyre

Preface, 2nd edition (21 December 1847)
Jane Eyre (1847)
Context: p>Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns. These things and deeds are diametrically opposed: they are as distinct as is vice from virtue. Men too often confound them: they should not be confounded: appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ. There is — I repeat it — a difference; and it is a good, and not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between them.The world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has been accustomed to blend them; finding it convenient to make external show pass for sterling worth — to let white-washed walls vouch for clean shrines. It may hate him who dares to scrutinise and expose — to rase the gilding, and show base metal under it — to penetrate the sepulchre, and reveal charnel relics: but hate as it will, it is indebted to him.</p

“It is ugly ducklings, grown either into swans or into remarkably big, remarkably ugly ducks, who are responsible for most works of art; and yet how few of these give a truthful account of what it was like to be an ugly duckling!—it is almost as if the grown, successful swan had repressed most of the memories of the duckling’s miserable, embarrassing, magical beginnings.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

The memories are deeply humiliating in two ways: they remind the adult that he was once more ignorant and gullible and emotional than he is; and they remind him that he once was, potentially, far more than he is.
“An Unread Book”, p. 19
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)