The Toilers of the Sea

by Victor Hugo

Matter is eternal; not its aspect.

The scar of human work can be seen on the work of God.

A universe is a mass of raw material. The world, which is God’s work, is man’s canvas.

A child, breaking a toy, seems to be looking for its soul. Man, too, seems to be looking for the soul of the earth.

We must look elsewhere for Eden. Spring is good; but freedom and justice are better. Eden is moral, not material. To be free and just depends on ourselves. Serenity is internal. Our perpetual spring is within us.

Solitude adds a quality to simple people, and gives them a certain complication. They become imbued, unconsciously, with a sacred awe.

Solitude brings out a certain amount of sublime exaltation. It is the smoke from the burning bush. It produces a mysterious vibration of ideas that enlarges the scholar into the seer and the poet into the prophet;

To see the inmost depths of the sea is to see the imagination of the Unknown, and to see it from its most terrible side.

A man in despair participates in the life of others from a great distance; he is almost unaware of their presence; he has lost any consciousness of his own existence; he is a thing of flesh and blood but feels that he is no longer real; he sees himself only as a dream.

There is nothing equal to the timidity of ignorance unless it be its temerity. When ignorance becomes bold, it has within it a compass— an intuition of what is true and right that is sometimes clearer in a simple mind than in a complicated one.

Ignorance incites a man to endeavor; for ignorance is a dreamlike state, and a dream fed by curiosity is a powerful force. Knowledge sometimes disconcerts a man, and frequently discourages action.

If there is no brilliance under the eyelid, there is no thought in the brain, no love in the heart. A man who loves exerts his will, and a man who exerts his will radiates light and brilliance.

The refusal of the soul to yield to the weakness of the body is a source of immense power.

To be powerless is a strength. In the presence of those two blind forces, destiny and nature, man in his very powerlessness has found a support in prayer.

“God has manifested His intentions in flowers, in the dawn, in spring, and He desires that we should love.

Man is at the mercy of events. Life is a perpetual succession of events, and we must submit to it. We never know from what quarter the sudden blow of chance will come. Catastrophe and good fortune come upon us and then depart, like unexpected visitors. They have their own laws, their own orbits, their own gravitational force, all independent of man.