Five years Quote by Victor Hugo
““It so happens that this is particular love was precisely the sort best suited to the state of her soul. It was a sort of remote worship, a mute contemplation, a deification by an unknown votary. It was the apprehension of adolescence by adolescence, her dreams becoming romance ad remain in dream, the wished-for phantom realized at last and made flash, but still without name or wrong or fault, or need, or defect; in a word, a lover distant and ideal, a chimera having form. Any closer and more palpable encounter at this first stage would have terrified Cosette, still half buried in the magnifying mirage of the cloister. She had all the terrors of children and all the terrors of nuns mingled. The spirit of the convent, in which she had been steeped for five years, was still evaporating from her whole person, and made everything tremulous around her. In this condition, it was not a lover she needed, it was not even an admirer, it was a vision. She began to adore Marius as something charming, luminous, and impossible.””
About This Quote
Source Novel: Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, 1862
Cosette idealizes love as a distant, unattainable vision, fearing real intimacy because of her convent upbringing.
In simple terms: She loves a perfect, imagined lover, not a real one.
Accept that idealized love may be a fantasy.
Themes
Mood
Type
When to use this quote
- adolescent crush
- first love
- spiritual contemplation
- personal growth
Key Concepts
Questions to Reflect On
- Do you cling to an ideal rather than a person?
- How does fear shape your relationships?
Real love may not match the ideal, leading to disappointment.