This is Florence, my jam jar.
She is full of inspiration and
on rainy days when things are looking bleak
or I feel a bit down, or I need motivation
or just when I feel like it
I delve in and pick out one of the tickets upon which are written inspiring and thought-provoking quotations.

This time Florence has chosen to buddy-up with Victor Hugo the french novelist, playwright and poet who many of you will know more famously for his epic novels “Les Miserables” and “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame”  (Notre-Dame de Paris) and the fabulous musicals based on his books than for his thought-provoking quotes and comments. Not many people know that Hugo was also a committed and out-spoken human rights activist.

Many of his quotes are timeless and have just as much resonance today as they did during his lifetime.
“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”

Here are just a few of Victor Hugo’s quotes to unite with your “Florence.”

Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.

No one knows like a woman how to say things which are at once gentle and deep.

Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings.

Do not let it be your aim to be something, but to be someone.

Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.

Life’s greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved.

I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes, – and the stars through his soul.

Each man should frame life so that at some future hour fact and his dreaming meet.

Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age.

Son, brother, father, lover, friend. There is room in the heart for all the affections, as there is room in heaven for all the stars.

Perseverance, secret of all triumphs.

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.

How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said.

I love all men who think, even those who think otherwise than myself.

It is by suffering that human beings become angels.

It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.

Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.

So on rainy days when things are looking bleak
or you feel a bit down, or you need motivation
or just when you feel like it
delve in.

You may also like;

Ruthie Henshall- I Dreamed a Dream from Les Miserables

Cliff Richard & Sarah Brightman-All I ask of you from Phantom of the Opera