“They had done him the honor to take him for a madman, but had set him free on discovering that he was only a poet.”

—  Victor Hugo, book The Man Who Laughs

The Man Who Laughs (1869)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "They had done him the honor to take him for a madman, but had set him free on discovering that he was only a poet." by Victor Hugo?
Victor Hugo photo
Victor Hugo308
French poet, novelist, and dramatist 1802–1885

Related quotes

Michael Drayton photo

“Had in him those brave translunary things
That the first poets had.”

Michael Drayton (1563–1631) English poet

To Henry Reynolds, of Poets and Poesy (1627), referring to Christopher Marlowe.

Alice Sebold photo

“I was in the air around him. I was in the cold mornings he had now. I was in the quiet time he spent alone. I was the girl he had chosen to kiss. He wanted, somehow to set me free. -Susie Salmon”

Alice Sebold book The Lovely Bones

Source: The Lovely Bones

Robin Lane Fox photo

“No man, and only one hero, had been called invincible before him, and then only by a poet, but the hero was Heracles, ancestor of the Macedonian kings.”

Robin Lane Fox (1946) Historian, educator, writer, gardener

Source: Alexander the Great, 1973, p.71

Nathanael Greene photo

“Your Excellency's favor of the 24th I had the honor of receiving last evening. I dined yesterday with the Minister of France, and find him still deter mined to set out for camp to-morrow. He sets out at seven in the morning, and intends lodging at Trenton. On Wednesday, he will be in camp, if no accident attends him; but at what hour, cannot be ascertained, as the place he dines at is not yet determined on. I intend to wait upon him some time this morning, and learn more particularly his stages. Don Juan accompanies him.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (26 April 1779)

“The Poet could not remember ever fearing death, but he had often suspected Providence of plotting the worst for him as to the manner of his dying when the time came to go. He had expected to rot away. Slowly and not very fragrantly. Some poetic insight had warned him that he would surely die a blubbering leprous lump, cravenly penitential but impenitent. Never had he anticipated anything so blunt and final as a bullet in the stomach, and with not even an audience at hand to hear his dying quips. The last thing they had heard him say when they shot him was: "Oof!"”

Walter M. Miller, Jr. book A Canticle for Leibowitz

his testament for posterity. Ooof!
Ch 23
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Fiat Lux

George MacDonald photo

“Diamond, however, had not been out so late before in all his life, and things looked so strange about him! — just as if he had got into Fairyland, of which he knew quite as much as anybody; for his mother had no money to buy books to set him wrong on the subject.”

George MacDonald book At the Back of the North Wind

At the Back of the North Wind (1871)

Cornelia Funke photo

“She had found him and was bringing back his thanks. Nor did she forget to mention that he had assured her that she was indeed the most beautiful fairy he had ever set eyes on.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkdeath

Halldór Laxness photo

“In reality, no one had meant anything by talking to the parish pauper, none of them cared at all, no one even thought of carrying him downstairs to let him see the wedding like other folk; he was not allowed to see the wedding that he himself had brought about with his poetic talent—such is the lot of poets.</b”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book One: The Revelation of the Deity

John F. Kennedy photo

“If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, Speech at Amherst College
Context: If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.
Context: If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth. And as Mr. MacLeish once remarked of poets, there is nothing worse for our trade than to be in style. In free society art is not a weapon and it does not belong to the spheres of polemic and ideology. Artists are not engineers of the soul. It may be different elsewhere. But democratic society — in it, the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may. In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation. And the nation which disdains the mission of art invites the fate of Robert Frost's hired man, the fate of having "nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope."

Related topics