"The drama is complete poetry. The ode..." - Quote by Victor Hugo
The drama is complete poetry. The ode and the epic contain it only in germ; it contains both of them in a state of high development, and epitomizes both.
More by Victor Hugo
“When people look back at their childhood or youth, their wistfulness comes from the memory, not of what their lives had been in those years, but of what life had then promised to be. The expectation of some indefinable splendor, of the unusual, the exciting, the great is an attribute of youth and the process of aging is the process of that expectations' gradual extinction. One does not have to let it happen. But that fire dies for lack of fuel, under the gray weight of disappointments.”
“If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away.”
“Joy's smile is much closer to tears than laughter.”
More on Art
“What can books of men that wiveIn a dragon-guarded land,Paintings of the dolphin-drawnSea-nymphs in their pearly wagonsDo, but awake a hope to live...?”
“Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.”
“We don't really want to think that the artist is only very skilled, that he has merely devoted his life to perfecting a certain set of intelligible skills.”
More on Literature
“And when we are writing the life of a woman, we may, it is agreed, waive our demand for action, and substitute love instead. Love, the poet has said, is a woman's whole existence.”
“Literature is always personal, always one man's vision of the world, one man's experience, and it can only be popular when men are ready to welcome the visions of others.”
“It certainly is my opinion that a book worth reading only in childhood is not worth reading even then.”