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Who really said it

Melancholy Is the Pleasure of Being Sad

Not H.L. Mencken — actually Victor Hugo Victor Hugo 1802–1885 · French novelist, poet and dramatist
Disputed Free to reuse

Hugo wrote it in Les Travailleurs de la Mer (1866): “La mélancolie, c’est le bonheur d’être triste.” The exact English words people quote come from the authorized translation published the same year by W. Moy Thomas, where the line appears on page 159 of volume III. Mencken gets the credit only because he reprinted it in his 1942 New Dictionary of Quotations — under Hugo’s name, correctly cited.

Last verified 30 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Melancholy Is the Pleasure of Being Sad” Victor Hugo, Toilers of the Sea (1866), authorized English translation by W. Moy Thomas, vol. III, p. 159; originally "La mélancolie, c’est le bonheur d’être triste" in Les Travailleurs de la Mer (1866). Not H.L. Mencken, who reprinted it in his 1942 New Dictionary of Quotations and credited Hugo correctly. Public domain.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to H.L. Mencken. Use the credit shown above instead.

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In context

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Provenance

The source

The work
Toilers of the Sea
Author, first published
Victor Hugo, as Les Travailleurs de la Mer, 1866
Translation quoted
Authorized English translation by W. Moy Thomas (London: Sampson Low, Son, & Marston, 1866), vol. III, p. 159
Where in the book
Third Part, Book I (“Night and the Moon”), ch. I, “The Harbour Clock”
How Mencken enters it
Reprinted in A New Dictionary of Quotations (1942), p. 777, credited to Hugo

“Despair has its backward stages. From overwhelmment we rise to dejection; from dejection to affliction; from affliction to melancholy. Melancholy is a twilight state; suffering melts into it and becomes a sombre joy. Melancholy is the pleasure of being sad.” Verbatim, vol. III, p. 159

The sentence is the last step of a ladder, not an aphorism on its own. Hugo is describing how the shipowner Lethierry climbs out of ruin — despair rising by degrees until it settles into something almost pleasant.

Read the 1866 authorized translation, vol. III

How we verified this

  • Quote Investigator ↗ concludes that “Victor Hugo should be credited with this statement which was originally constructed in French by 1866,” and reproduces the French from Les Travailleurs de la Mer: “La mélancolie, c’est le bonheur d’être triste.” QI cites the 1866 Librairie Internationale edition, volume 2, page 154 — a page we did not read ourselves.
  • Which English translation? QI notes only that “Mencken used a different translation” and does not name it. We found it. The scanned third volume of the authorized English translation by W. Moy Thomas (London: Sampson Low, Son, & Marston, 1866) carries the sentence verbatim on page 159: “Melancholy is the pleasure of being sad.” The full scan, title page and all ↗
  • Mencken’s own citation points at that same edition. QI reproduces his entry ↗ as “Melancholy is the pleasure of being sad. VICTOR HUGO: The Toilers of the Sea, III, 1866” — volume III, 1866, which is exactly the Moy Thomas edition. Mencken does not name a translator anywhere in the entry, so the identification is ours rather than his: the wording he printed is the one Moy Thomas published, and his citation points at the volume it is in.
  • Two other English renderings exist and neither matches the popular wording: Isabel F. Hapgood’s 1888 translation has “Melancholy is the happiness of being sad,” and James Hogarth’s 2002 version has “Melancholy is the enjoyment of being sad.” Both per Quote Investigator ↗.
Public domain

Clear on both counts. Hugo’s French original was published in 1866 and he died in 1885; the English wording quoted here comes from W. Moy Thomas’s authorized translation of the same year, and Thomas died in 1910. Both are far beyond the 1931 United States copyright cut-off, so this sentence is in the public domain. Note that Mencken’s 1942 dictionary is not — but you do not need it, because the 1866 translation is the earlier and better source.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Often misattributed

This is a misattribution with an innocent culprit. Mencken compiled a dictionary of other people’s quotations, attributed this one properly, and then had it stick to him anyway.

H.L. Mencken quoted, not authored

Mencken printed the line in A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles (1942), in its Melancholy section on page 777, under the heading “VICTOR HUGO: The Toilers of the Sea, III, 1866.” He was the editor of the book it appears in, not the author of the sentence. Quote Investigator ↗

Victor Hugo

“La mélancolie, c’est le bonheur d’être triste” — Les Travailleurs de la Mer, 1866. QI’s conclusion ↗ is unambiguous: Hugo should be credited.

W. Moy Thomas translation, not the original

The specific English words that circulate are his, from the authorized translation of 1866 — not Hapgood’s 1888 “happiness” nor Hogarth’s 2002 “enjoyment.” Thomas (1828–1910) ↗ was an English journalist and literary editor, and is almost never named alongside the quotation. His translation, vol. III, p. 159 ↗

Hugo wrote it; Moy Thomas gave it these English words; Mencken merely filed it correctly. Quote Investigator’s full account ↗

Context

Why it mattered

Read in place, the line is not a pretty thought about sadness — it is the top of a staircase. Hugo has his ruined shipowner Mess Lethierry climbing out of catastrophe by stages: overwhelmment, dejection, affliction, and finally melancholy, which Hugo calls “a twilight state.” The sentence about pleasure is the arrival, and it is meant to sound like relief rather than indulgence.

Hugo then takes it straight back: “These elegiac moods were not made for Lethierry.” The most-quoted sentence in the passage describes a consolation the character is specifically denied.

Melancholy is a twilight state; suffering melts into it and becomes a sombre joy.

Read the full story

How the credit moved to Mencken is easy to reconstruct, and it is a pattern worth recognising. A big, authoritative reference book is the place a great many quotations are looked up; strip one line out of it and the compiler’s name is the name still attached to the page. Mencken’s New Dictionary of Quotations was a monument of exactly that kind, and the transfer happens to him more than once.

The translator’s disappearance is the quieter loss. “Pleasure,” “happiness” and “enjoyment” are three different readings of Hugo’s bonheur, and it is the first — W. Moy Thomas’s, printed in the novel’s own year of publication — that English readers ended up memorising. He is credited nowhere in the popular quotation.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Happiness Hope

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Investigator: “Melancholy Is the Pleasure of Being Sad”quoteinvestigator.com

The investigation: Hugo’s French original, the 1888 and 2002 translations, and Mencken’s 1942 dictionary entry reproduced in full.
Toilers of the Sea, authorized translation, vol. III (1866)archive.org

Full scan of the W. Moy Thomas translation published by Sampson Low. The sentence is on p. 159; the title page names the translator.
Victor Hugoen.wikipedia.org

The author (1802–1885) — French Romantic novelist, poet and dramatist.
Toilers of the Seaen.wikipedia.org

Background on the 1866 novel the line comes from.
H. L. Menckenen.wikipedia.org

The American journalist (1880–1956) who compiled the dictionary this line is usually taken from — and who credited Hugo.
William Moy Thomasen.wikipedia.org

The English journalist and literary editor (1828–1910) whose 1866 translation produced the familiar English wording.

The author

About Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo

1802–1885 · French Romantic novelist, poet and dramatist

Victor Hugo was a French Romantic author, poet, playwright and politician, best known for The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831) and Les Misérables (1862). Les Travailleurs de la Mer followed in 1866 and is dedicated to Guernsey, where Hugo spent fifteen years in exile; the story turns on a Guernsey shipowner, Mess Lethierry, whose vessel is wrecked on a reef. The ladder of despair this quotation completes is very much his register — an abstraction stated as flatly as a fact, dropped into the middle of a story about a wrecked steamship.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The primary source (Chicago)

Victor Hugo, Toilers of the Sea, authorized English translation by W. Moy Thomas, 3 vols. (London: Sampson Low, Son, & Marston, 1866), 3:159. Originally published as Les Travailleurs de la Mer (Paris: Librairie Internationale, A. Lacroix, Verboeckhoven, 1866). Reprinted in H. L. Mencken, ed., A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles from Ancient and Modern Sources (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1942), 777, where it is credited to Hugo. Attribution history per Garson O’Toole, Quote Investigator, “Melancholy Is the Pleasure of Being Sad” (January 29, 2015).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Melancholy Is the Pleasure of Being Sad’?” Last verified 30 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/melancholy-is-the-pleasure-of-being-sad/

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