The first will be from Les Misérables – Victor Hugo
"The future
belongs to hearts even more than it does to minds.
Love, that
is the only thing that can occupy and fill eternity. In the infinite, the
inexhaustible is requisite.
Love
participates of the soul itself. It is of the same nature. Like it, it is the
divine spark; like it, it is incorruptible, indivisible, imperishable.
It is a
point of fire that exists within us, which is immortal and infinite, which
nothing can confine, and which nothing can extinguish. We feel it burning even
to the very marrow of our bones, and we see it beaming in the very depths of
heaven…
What a grand
thing it is to be loved! What a far grander thing it is to love!
The heart
becomes heroic, by dint of passion. It is no longer composed of anything but
what is pure; it no longer rests on anything that is not elevated and great.
An unworthy
thought can no more germinate in it, than a nettle on a glacier.
The serene
and lofty soul, inaccessible to vulgar passions and emotions, dominating the
clouds and the shades of this world, its follies, its lies, its hatreds, its
vanities, its miseries, inhabits the blue of heaven, and no longer feels
anything but profound and subterranean shocks of destiny, as the crests of
mountains feel the shocks of earthquake.
If there did
not exist someone who loved, the sun would become extinct."
