“There is nothing like a dream to create the future” is one of the most quoted lines in Les Misérables. This is the true story of where Victor Hugo actually wrote it — about the young dreamers of 1832, in a novel he completed in exile.
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Ten words and phrases in four activities. Say your answer out loud before you reveal it.
Three words: to suppress · posterity · an idealist. Say the right one, then reveal.
Read each part. Then answer the quick questions from memory before you check. Then discuss the question.
Les Misérables was published in 1862, in five parts: Fantine, Cosette, Marius, Saint-Denis and Jean Valjean. The sentence everyone quotes is not spoken by Jean Valjean, or by any character at all. It is in the third part, Marius, in Book Four, “The Friends of the A B C”, in a chapter Hugo called “A Group Which Barely Missed Becoming Historic”. Hugo stops the plot to describe the mood among young people in Paris in the years before 1832: royalists were becoming liberals, liberals were becoming democrats, and the most serious minds were falling in love with absolute principles.
Then he writes, in the French: « Rien n'est tel que le dogme pour enfanter le rêve. Et rien n'est tel que le rêve pour engendrer l'avenir. Utopie aujourd'hui, chair et os demain. » Isabel Hapgood's English translation of 1887 gives: “There is nothing like dogma for bringing forth dreams. And there is nothing like dreams for engendering the future. Utopia to-day, flesh and blood to-morrow.” Another Victorian translation, by Lascelles Wraxall, is closer to the modern quote: “nothing like a dream to engender the future.”
So the quote on the posters is real, but polished. Engender has become create, and the first half of the thought — that rigid belief is what gives birth to dreams — has quietly disappeared. The chapter goes on to introduce a small society of students, the Friends of the A B C. The name was a pun: in French, A B C sounds like abaissé, “the people pushed down”. In Hapgood's words, the group's object was “apparently the education of children, in reality the elevation of man.” Their leader in the novel is Enjolras, and their dream is a republic.
1. Where exactly in the novel does the sentence appear, and who says it?
2. In what two ways is the popular quotation different from what Hugo wrote?
1. Part Three (Marius), Book Four (“The Friends of the A B C”), Chapter One. No character says it: it is the narrator's own comment on the young idealists of the time.
2. “Engender” (French engendrer) has become the simpler “create”, and the sentence before it — that dogma gives birth to dreams — has been cut off.
Victor Hugo was born in Besançon in 1802, the son of a general in Napoleon's army. As a young man he was a committed royalist; over the decades he became a passionate republican. On 5 June 1832, according to his biographer Graham Robb, he was writing a play in the Tuileries Gardens when he heard gunfire. The park-keeper had to unlock the gate to let him out. Instead of going home, Hugo followed the sound — into a narrow passage near Les Halles, where the iron gates at both ends were slammed shut. He took shelter between some columns while, for a quarter of an hour, bullets flew both ways.
He did not begin writing the novel until 1845, and it was not finished for many years. In 1851 Louis Napoleon seized complete power, and Hugo publicly called him a traitor to France. He left — first for Brussels, then for the island of Jersey, from which he was expelled, and finally, in October 1855, for Guernsey. There he bought Hauteville House, paid for by the success of his poetry, and stayed until 1870. In 1859 the new emperor offered an amnesty to political exiles. Hugo refused it: accepting would have meant softening his criticism.
It was in this self-imposed exile that the great novel was completed; in 1861 he visited the battlefield of Waterloo, and finished writing it there. When Les Misérables appeared in 1862 — first in Belgium, in instalments that sold out — the critics were mostly hostile. Flaubert found in it “neither truth nor greatness”. Ordinary readers disagreed.
1. What happened to Hugo on 5 June 1832?
2. Why did Hugo leave France, and why did he refuse to come back in 1859?
1. He was writing in the Tuileries Gardens, heard gunfire, followed it and was trapped in a passage between closed gates, sheltering between columns while bullets flew for a quarter of an hour.
2. He called Louis Napoleon a traitor after the seizure of power in 1851 and went into exile. He refused the 1859 amnesty because accepting it would have meant limiting his criticism of the government.
The rising Hugo describes really happened, and it was not the famous revolution of 1789 — a mistake many viewers of the musical still make. In 1830 one king had been replaced by another, Louis-Philippe, and many republicans felt their revolution had been stolen. In the spring of 1832, cholera killed 18,402 people in Paris alone. On 1 June it killed General Lamarque, a general popular with the poor. At his funeral on 5 June, a red flag reading La Liberté ou la Mort — Liberty or Death — was raised, and shooting began.
About 3,000 insurgents held much of central and eastern Paris for one night, behind barricades in the narrow streets around the rue Saint-Martin and the rue Saint-Denis. They were heavily outnumbered by the National Guard and the regular army, and the last of them fought on at the Cloître Saint-Merry until the early evening of 6 June. Around 800 people were killed or wounded; 93 insurgents died. Most of the rebels were working-class. In the novel, Enjolras and his friends die on their barricade. The uprising failed completely.
And yet. Louis-Philippe was overthrown in 1848, though the republic that followed did not last. In 1870 the empire of Napoleon III fell, the Third Republic was proclaimed, and Hugo came home. When he died in 1885, more than two million people attended his state funeral, and he was buried in the Panthéon. A rising that most of France had forgotten became, through his novel, one of the best-known in the world. Utopia today, flesh and blood tomorrow — though not, for Enjolras and his friends, in their own lifetimes.
1. What sparked the uprising of June 1832, and how did it end?
2. What happened in 1848 and 1870 — and why does it matter for Hugo's sentence?
1. The funeral of General Lamarque, a cholera victim, on 5 June. It ended on the evening of 6 June with the last insurgents defeated at the Cloître Saint-Merry; about 800 people were killed or wounded.
2. In 1848 Louis-Philippe was overthrown; in 1870 the empire fell and the Third Republic was proclaimed. The republic that the students dreamed of came — but decades later, without them.
History is full of moments where we stand in the past and look forward: Hugo was to spend fifteen years on Guernsey. English has a precise set of structures for this — and choosing the right one tells your listener whether the future was a plan, a destiny, or a near miss.
Use was going to · would · was to · was about to — one in each sentence. Say each sentence aloud.
1. In 1832 nobody could know that the forgotten rising become world-famous through a novel thirty years later.
2. Hugo walk home, but he followed the sound of the guns instead.
3. Hugo arrived on Guernsey in October 1855. He stay there until 1870.
4. He sat writing in the Tuileries Gardens, with no idea that he hear the first shots of the uprising.
1. would — the later fact, seen from 1832. 2. was going to — a plan that didn't happen. 3. was to — formal narrative: what the future held (would is also possible). 4. was about to — the very near future (would is also possible).
Rewrite each sentence using the structure in brackets, keeping the meaning.
1. Hugo left France in 1851. He returned in 1870. (would)
2. The students planned to change France, but they died on the barricade. (were going to)
3. In 1862 the critics attacked the novel. Later it became one of the most famous books in the world. (was to / was destined to)
1. Hugo left France in 1851; he would not return until 1870.
2. The students were going to change France, but they died on the barricade.
3. In 1862 the critics attacked the novel, which was to become / was destined to become one of the most famous books in the world.
Check: did you use the bare infinitive after would / was to / was going to? Does not … until in 1 make the long wait clear?
You'll use it again in the Speak tab — Task C asks you to look back at your own past dreams.
The dates, numbers and quotations in this story come from the French and English texts of the novel and from the historical record. Put together, they make Hugo's famous sentence more interesting — and more uncomfortable — than the poster version.
Speak against the clock — and look forward from the past wherever it fits: would, was to, was going to, was about to, was doomed to.
Retell the story in your own words. Use these steps: the famous quote → Part Three, Book Four, Chapter One → dogma, dreams and the future → the Friends of the A B C and their pun → Hugo in the Tuileries Gardens, 5 June 1832 → the coup of 1851 and exile → Guernsey and the refused amnesty → Waterloo, 1862 and the hostile critics → cholera, Lamarque's funeral and the red flag → the last stand at Saint-Merry → 1848, 1870 and two million people at the funeral.
Use at least three future-in-the-past forms and five key words (exile, uprising, utopian, suppress, posterity, idealist, engender, come to fruition, pipe dream, ahead of their time).
First argue that dreamers build the future: without people who imagine something impossible, nothing changes. Then argue that realists do: the dreamers of 1832 died in two days, and it was patient, practical people who built the republic later. Finally, say what you really think — and give one example from history or from your own country.
Talk about a dream you had when you were younger. What were you going to be or do? What happened instead? Is any part of that dream still alive? Use was going to, would and was (not) to to look forward from the past — "At fifteen I was going to be a pilot. I didn't know then that I would…"
Or choose one of these: