Wednesdays with Words (Les Miserables)

 

Yes, I'm still reading Les Miserables , but hopefully will have this book finished by the end of the week. In my humble opinion Hugo was in need of an editor, but if he had this little gem probably  wouldn't have survived the final cut.

...For a long time now, in his [Marius] state of torment, he had ceased to work. Nothing is more dangerous than to stop working. It is a habit that can soon be lost, one that is easily neglected and hard to resume. A measure of day-dreaming is a good thing, like a drug prudently used; it allays the sometimes virulent fever of the over-active mind, like a cool wind blowing through the brain to smooth the harshness of untrammelled though; it bridges here and there the gaps, bring things into proportion and blunts the sharper angles. But too much submerges and drowns. Woe to the intellectual worker who allows himself to lapse wholly from positive thinking into day-dreaming. He thinks he can easily change back, and tells himself that it is all one. He is wrong! Thought is the work of intellect, reverie is its self-indulgence. To substitute day-dreaming for thought is to confuse a poison with a source of nourishment.