virtuouslibertines69

[virtuouslibertines69]

"Let us not insult the gods," said he. "The gods may not have taken their departure. Jupiter does not impress me as dead. The gods are dreams, you say. It has not been proved to me that Pan does not come at night to breathe into the hollow trunks of the willows, stopping up the holes in turn with his fingers, and I have always believed that Io had something to do with the cascade of Pissevache." - Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Art by Dawid Planeta

[virtuouslibertines69]

“Don't try to behave as though you were essentially sane and naturally good. We're all demented sinners in the same cosmic boat - and the boat is perpetually sinking.” - Aldous Huxley, Island

Art by Salvator Rosa

[virtuouslibertines69]

"Your eyes are beautiful, you said. You said they were the darkest eyes you’d ever seen and kissed each one as if they were capable of miracles." - Sandra Cisneros, from Woman at Hollering Creek: Stories; “Never Marry a Mexican,”

[virtuouslibertines69]

"Man is evil, man is deformed; the butterfly is a success, man is a failure. God made a mistake with that animal. A crowd offers a choice of ugliness. Yes, I have the spleen, complicated with melancholy, with homesickness, plus hypochondria, and I am vexed and I rage, and I yawn, and I am bored, and I am tired to death, and I am stupid! Let God go to the devil!" - Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Art by Francesco Hayez

[virtuouslibertines69]

“...two thirds of all sorrow is homemade and, so far as the universe is concerned, unnecessary.” - Aldous Huxley, Island

Art by Tanya Shatseva

[virtuouslibertines69]

"You can never have too much sky. You can fall asleep and wake up drunk on sky, and sky can keep you safe when you are sad. Here there is too much sadness and not enough sky." - Sandra Cisneros, from The House on Mango Street; “Darius & the Clouds,

[virtuouslibertines69]

"Every good quality tends towards a defect; economy borders on avarice, the generous man is next door to the prodigal, the brave man rubs elbows with the braggart; he who says very pious says a trifle bigoted; there are just as many vices in virtue as there are holes in Diogenes' cloak." - Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Art by Arantzazu Martinez

[virtuouslibertines69]

“Did you ever feel, as though you had something inside you that was only waiting for you to give it a chance to come out? Some sort of extra power that you aren't using - you know, like all the water that goes down the falls instead of through the turbines?” - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Art by Laura H. Rubin

[virtuouslibertines69]

"It was necessary to relearn to look at everything as if it were the first time. I looked at it as if it were the last." - Clarice Lispector, from a letter to Fernando Sabino wr. c. March 1959

[virtuouslibertines69]

"O vanity! The patching up of everything with big words! Vanity has a right and a wrong side; the right side is stupid, it is the negro with his glass beads; the wrong side is foolish, it is the philosopher with his rags. I weep over the one and I laugh over the other." - Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Photography by Seanen Middleton

[virtuouslibertines69]

“Why do you love the woman you're in love with? Because she is. And that, after all, is God's own definition of Himself; I am that I am. The girl is who she is. Some of her isness spills over and impregnates the entire universe. Objects and events cease to be mere representations of classes and become their own uniqueness; cease to be illustrations of verbal abstractions and become fully concrete. Then you stop being in love, and the universe collapses, with an almost audible squeak of derision, into its normal insignificance.” - Aldous Huxley, The Genius And The Goddess

Photography by Betina Du Toit

[virtuouslibertines69]

"What is the soul allowed to keep? Every Birth, every small gift, every ache? I know I have knelt just here, torn apart by loss." - Tracy K. Smith, from “Eternity,” published in The Awl

Art by Moonassi

[virtuouslibertines69]

"Life is a hideous invention of I know not whom. It lasts no time at all, and is worth nothing. One breaks one's neck in living. Life is a theatre set in which there are but few practicable entrances. Happiness is an antique reliquary painted on one side only." - Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Photography by Kyle Thompson

[virtuouslibertines69]

“The trouble with fiction," said John Rivers, "is that it makes too much sense. Reality never makes sense.” - Aldous Huxley, The Genius And The Goddess

Art by Paolo Pedron

[virtuouslibertines69]

“Don’t live the same year 75 times and call it a life.” - Robin Sharma

[virtuouslibertines69]

"Tasting a mystery resembles getting the first flavor of a scandal; sainted souls do not detest this. There is some curiosity about scandal in the secret compartments of bigotry." - Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Art by David Palumbo

[virtuouslibertines69]

“All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.” - Aldous Huxley, Island

Sempiteral by Oozium