Wedding reading
from Les Misérables — the supreme happiness
Victor Hugo, tr. Isabel F. Hapgood
“from Les Misérables — the supreme happiness” by Victor Hugo, tr. Isabel F. Hapgood is a prose reading read at a wedding ceremony. It takes about 15 seconds read aloud, usually by the officiant. It is in the public domain, so the full text is printed on this page and goes straight into a ceremony script.
The full text
The supreme happiness of life consists in the conviction that one is loved; loved for one's own sake—let us say rather, loved in spite of one's self.
Public domain, so these words can be printed in a ceremony script or an order of service.
What it is about
One sentence, fifteen seconds, and it holds the whole argument for marrying somebody. Worth knowing: "to love another person is to see the face of God" is from the 1985 musical rather than from Hugo, so it is not here.
Read at a wedding ceremony. Themes: the supreme happiness of life · loved in spite of one’s self · the conviction that one is loved · one sentence · very short · a line for the officiant to use · a second marriage.
Questions about reading it aloud
How long does “from Les Misérables — the supreme happiness” take to read aloud?
“from Les Misérables — the supreme happiness” takes about 15 seconds read aloud at a ceremony pace, which is slower than conversation — roughly 130 words a minute. That is the figure the run-sheet uses when it works out the timing for the whole service.
Who usually reads “from Les Misérables — the supreme happiness”?
Usually the officiant rather than a guest reader. “from Les Misérables — the supreme happiness” runs about 15 seconds, which sits inside the part of the service the officiant is already leading, and keeping it there means it is carried by the person who has rehearsed it.
Can “from Les Misérables — the supreme happiness” be printed in a ceremony script?
Yes. It is in the public domain, so the full text is on this page and can be printed in a script or an order of service.
Where this text was checked
Checked word for word against a full-text edition that is itself the authority — a Project Gutenberg or Wikisource transcription, a publisher’s own edition, or the issuing body’s page.
Checked
A reading is two minutes of the hour.
The rest is the welcome, the vows, the ring exchange, the pronouncement — and the timing that holds them together. Answer some questions about the couple and get the whole ceremony, written out, with this reading in its place.
Other readings that suit the same service
- On Marriage, from The Propheta minute and a halfKahlil Gibran
- On Becoming Real, from The Velveteen Rabbit55 secondsMargery Williams
- from Jane Eyre — ten years marrieda minute and a halfCharlotte Brontë
- from The House at Pooh Corner — "I just wanted to be sure of you"15 secondsA. A. Milne
- from Obergefell v. Hodgesa minute and a halfJustice Anthony Kennedy
- from the Symposium — the speech of Aristophanestwo minutesPlato, tr. Benjamin Jowett