The ideal and the beautiful are identical the ideal corresponds to the idea, and beauty to form hence idea and substance are cognate. – Victor Hugo
Nothing else in the world… not all the armies… is so powerful as an idea whose time has come. – Victor Hugo
We say that slavery has vanished from European civilization, but this is not true. Slavery still exists, but now it applies only to women and its name is prostitution. – Victor Hugo
Thought is the labor of the intellect, reverie is its pleasure. – Victor Hugo
In fairyland we avoid the word “law”; but in the land of science they are singularly fond of it…. The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in fairy books, “charm,” “spell,” “enchantment.” They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery. – G.K. Chesterton, “The Ethics of Elfland,” Orthodoxy