A Quote by Victor Hugo

Thought is the labor of the intellect, reverie is its pleasure. — © Victor Hugo
Thought is the labor of the intellect, reverie is its pleasure.
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.
Here we are at the very core of the thesis we wish to defend in the present essay: reverie is under the sign of the anima. When the reverie is truly profound, the being who comes to dream within us is our anima. For a philosopher who takes his inspiration from phenomenology, a reverie on reverie is very exactly a phenomenology of the anima, and it is by coordinating reveries on reverie that he hopes to constitute a "Poetics of reverie". In other words, the poetics of reverie is a poetics of the anima.
The reverie we intend to study is poetic reverie. This is a reverie which poetry puts on the right track, the track an expanding consciousness follows. This reverie is written, or, at least, promises to be written. It is already facing the great universe of the blank page. Then images begin to compose and fall into place.
A universe comes to contribute to our happiness when reverie comes to accentuate our repose. You must tell the man who wants to dream well to begin by being happy. Then reverie plays out its veritable destiny; it becomes poetic reverie and by it, in it, everything becomes beautiful. If the dreamer had "the gift" he would turn his reverie into a work. And this work would be grandiose since the dreamed world is automatically grandiose.
Instead of looking for the dream in reverie, people should look for reverie in the dream. There are calm beaches in the midst of nightmares.
To lose one's self in reverie, one must be either very happy, or very unhappy. Reverie is the child of extremes.
One finds fortunes built on slave labor, indentured labor, prison labor, immigrant labor, female labor, child labor, and scab labor - backed by the lethal force of gun thugs and militia. 'Old money' is often little more than dirty money laundered by several generations of possession.
Above thought is the intellect, which still seeks: it goes about looking, spies out here and there, picks up and drops. But above the intellect that seeks is another intellect which does not seek but stays in its pure, simple being, which is embraced in that light.
The thing that I was brought up to prize above everything else is the intellect. There is no problem that the intellect cannot solve, but it never had an original thought. Originality is the realm of the unconscious.
A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.
As you see, I do not treat the creation of fiction, that to say the invention and development of fantasies, as a form of abstract thought. I don't wish to deny the uses of the intellect, but sometimes one has the intuition that the intellect by itself will lead one nowhere.
As you see, I do not treat the creation of fiction, that to say the invention and development of fantasies,as a form of abstract thought. I dont wish to deny the uses of the intellect,but sometimes one has the intuition that the intellect by itself will lead one nowhere.
In contemplation and reverie, one thought introduces another perpetually; and it is by similarity, or the hooking of one upon the other, that the process of thinking is carried on.
All the senses awaken and fall into harmony in poetic reverie. Poetic reverie listens to this polyphony of the senses, and the poetic consciousness must record it.
It is a good idea to be alone in a garden at dawn or dark so that all its shy presences may haunt you and possess you in a reverie of suspended thought.
When my work does speak to audiences, when it creates audiences around it, I feel a little less crazy because what that means is that there are folks out there who are interested in thinking about themselves and the world through a prism. The prism is a labor and there can be a pleasure in labor.
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