It seemed to be a necessary ritual that he should prepare himself for sleep by meditating under the solemnity of the night sky... a mysterious transaction between the infinity of the soul and the infinity of the universe.
Victor HugoRead
There are no rules, no models; rather, there are no rules other than the general laws of Nature.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the absence of fixed rules in life, highlighting the importance of natural laws.
Victor Hugo is suggesting that while societal rules and models may exist, they are not absolute and can be transcended. Instead, he points to the fundamental laws of Nature as the only true guidelines for understanding life and existence, encouraging individuals to rely on their intuition and the natural order rather than artificially imposed constraints.
Themes
RulesNatureLifeFreedomPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about creativity and innovation, one could quote this to inspire thinking outside the box.
More from Victor Hugo
All quotes βWhen two mouths, made sacred by love, draw near to each other to create, it is impossible, that above that ineffable kiss there should not be a thrill in the immense mystery of the stars.
Victor HugoRead
At that moment of love, a moment when passion is absolutely silent under omnipotence of ecstasy, Marius, pure seraphic Marius, would have been more capable of visiting a woman of the streets than of raising Cosetteβs dress above the ankle. Once on a moonlit night, Cosette stopped to pick up something from the ground, her dress loosened and revealed the swelling of her breasts. Marius averted his eyes.
Victor HugoRead
Thought is the work of the intellect, reverie is its self-indulgence. To substitute day-dreaming for thought is to confuse a poison with a source of nourishment.
Victor HugoRead
Taste is the common sense of genius.
Victor HugoRead
Forget not, never forget that you have promised me to use this silver to become an honest man.... Jean Valjean, my brother: you belong no longer to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I am buying for you. I withdraw it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God!
Victor HugoRead
Similar quotes
The test of Christian character should be that a man is a joy-bearing agent to the world.
Henry Ward BeecherRead
After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager.'
William S. BurroughsRead
Those candle flames were like the lives of men. So fragile. So deadly. Left alone, they lit and warmed. Let run rampant, they would destroy the very things they were meant to illuminate. Embryonic bonfires, each bearing a seed of destruction so potent it could tumble cities and dash kings to their knees.
Brandon SandersonRead
The fact that so many people choose to live in ways that narrow the community of fate to a very limited set of others and to define the rest as threatening to their way of life and values is deeply worrying because this contemporary form of tribalism, and the ideologies that support it, enable them to deny complex and more crosscutting mutual interdependencies-local, national, and international-and to elude their own role in creating long-term threats to their own wellbeing and that of others.
Margaret LeviRead
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.
Arthur C. ClarkeRead
It is not the creation of wealth that is wrong, but the love of money for its own sake.
Margaret ThatcherRead