Hugo on troubled times
Read a nice line in Les Miserables recently:
"The pupil dilates in the night, and at last finds day in it, even as the soul dilates in misfortune, and at last finds God in it." (1104 in the Modern Library Edition)
"Little incidents . . . are, so to speak, the foliage of great events and are lost in the distance of history." - Victor Hugo in Les Miserables