On the human soul & thought by Victor Hugo

The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real.It is by the real that we exist;it is by the ideal that we live.

There are thoughts which are prayers.There are moments when,whatever the posture of the body,the soul is on its knees.

There is one spectacle grander than the sea,that is the sky;there is one spectacle grander than the sky,that is the interior of the soul.

Love is a portion of the soul itself,and it is of the same nature as the celestial breathing of the atmosphere of paradise.

Mankind is not a circle with a single center but an ellipse with two focal points of which facts are one and ideas the other.

Thought is the labor of the intellect,reverie is its pleasure