Hugo on the Ideal

Victor Hugo sketched by Alphonse Legros

Should we continue to look upwards? Is the light we can see in the sky one of those which will presently be extinguished? The ideal is terrifying to behold, lost as it is in the depths, small, isolated, a pin-point, brilliant but threatened on all sides by the dark forces that surround it: nevertheless, no more in danger than a star in the jaws of the clouds.

–Victor Hugo, Les Misérables vol. iv, bk. vii (1862)