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There are 3 quotes matching Victor Hugo in the collection:
Be like the bird, who
Halting in his flight
On limb too slight
Feels it give way beneath him,
Yet sings
Knowing he hath wings.
Victor Hugo
Be Like the Bird, Songs of Dusk, 1836. There are several English translations. In original French:
Soyez comme l’oiseau, posé pour un instant
Sur des rameaux trop frêles,
Qui sent ployer la branche et qui chante pourtant,
Sachant qu’il a des ailes!
It will bring the immediate, absolute, instantaneous, universal and perpetual abolition of all frontiers, everywhere … The old Gordian knot of gravity will finally be untied … Armies will vanish, and with them the horrors of war, the exploitation of nations, the subjugations of populations. It will bring an immense and totally peaceful revolution. It will bring a sudden golden dawn, a brisk flinging open of the ancient cage door of history, a flooding in of light. It will mean the liberation of all mankind.
Victor Hugo
Letter on flight, 1864. ‘It’ was the balloon.
I believe, sir, in all the progress. Air navigation is the result of the oceanic navigation: from water the human has to pass in the air. Everywhere where creation will be breathable to him, the human will penetrate into the creation. Our only limit is life. There where ends the air column which prevents our machine to burst, the human has to stop. But he can, owes, and wants to go to there, and he will go. You can do it. I take the biggest interest in your useful and brave perpendicular journeys. You ingenious and fearless companion, Mr W. de Fontevielle, has as Mr. Victor Meunier the superior instinct of the true science. I would have the magnificent taste of the scientific adventure. Adventure in the fact, the hypothesis in the idea, here is the two big processes of discovery. Certainly, the future is for air navigation and the duty of the present is to work for the future. You are just now endorsing this duty. I, solitary person, but attentive, I am your eyes and I say to you: Courage!
Victor Hugo
Letter sent to Gaston Tissandier, 9 March 1869.
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