2 passages by Victor Hugo, from Les Misérables. Victor Hugo died in 1885, so the words are in the public domain; the English translation by Isabel F. Hapgood is too. Every passage is copied word for word from the Project Gutenberg text.
The supreme happiness of life consists in the conviction that one is loved; loved for one’s own sake—let us say rather, loved in spite of one’s self
Love is the only ecstasy. All the rest weeps. To love, or to have loved,—this suffices. Demand nothing more. There is no other pearl to be found in the shadowy folds of life.
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