Victor Hugo: Typographic Portrait from Les Contemplations

“Genius is childhood rediscovered at will.”

“One must be absolutely modern.”

“The sky is pretty like an angel.”

“If the world were clear, art would not be.”

“Only children know what they are looking for.”

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”

“Sight does not master the pictures, it is the pictures which master one's sight. They flood one's consciousness.”

“Perfumes, colors, and sounds respond to one another.”

“To create is always to speak of childhood.”

“Art hovers around the truth, but with the firm intention not to burn itself.”

“Beauty is always strange. I do not mean that it is deliberately, coldly strange, for in that case it would be a monster off the rails of life. I say that it always contains a little strangeness, a naive strangeness.”

“Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little, and that true reality is only in dreams.”

“Art is the reflection that the dazzled human soul gives back of the splendor of the beautiful.”

“One sees clearly only with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eyes.”

“Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees.”

“Tears fall in my heart as rain falls on the town.”

“But where are the snows of yesteryear?”

“Art is the premonition of truth.”