“You, too, have lived, struggled, and suffered. Where I have wounds, you have scars. I want you to know one thing and one thing only: Nothing is more true than that misfortune brings understanding. One can never collapse inside oneself if one is truly sustained by pure understanding. How many things have I seen in myself and outside myself since my sorrow! The highest hopes spring from the deepest griefs.”
Victor Hugo, from a letter to Charles de Lacretelle written c. July 1844