Quote Atlassourced quotes & context
Source identified
Religion, Society, and Nature! these are the three struggles of man.
Read & copy the quotation
“Religion, Society, and Nature! these are the three struggles of man.”

Victor Hugo

Source
Toilers of the Sea
Date
1866
English wording
W. Moy Thomas — Translator · from French
Meaning

Meaning of “Religion, Society, and Nature! these are the three…”

Hugo frames human life as involving simultaneous struggles with belief, social institutions and the physical world.

Source context

Where does it come from?

Toilers of the Sea, Preface, represented by Project Gutenberg #32338 in W. Moy Thomas's English translation. 'Religion, Society, and Nature! these are the three struggles of man' opens Hugo's triadic framing of Notre-Dame de Paris, Les Misérables and Toilers of the Sea. It is translated authorial/literary framing, not a social-scientific taxonomy of every human struggle.

Primary / edition source ↗

Customize your imageTen designs · Square or portrait · Preview and share
Themes

Ideas connected with this quotation

CommunityDeepLifeNatureShortThought-Provoking Quotes That Invite ReflectionReligion
Related quotations

Continue through nearby ideas

Source identified
God made the country, and man made the town.
Image design Linen
Read & copy

“God made the country, and man made the town.”

William Cowper · The Task · 1785
Voice: Poetic speaker · Narrator of “The Task”
Meaning & context

Cowper compresses the poem’s preference for rural nature over fashionable urban life into a religious contrast between what he sees as creation and human construction.

Source details

The Task, Book I, represented by Project Gutenberg #3698. “God made the country, and man made the town” appears in Cowper’s didactic contrast between urban fashion and rural life immediately before claims about health and virtue in fields and groves. It remains eighteenth-century poetic and Christian-inflected judgment rather than empirical evidence that country living is healthier or more virtuous.

Source identified
In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright.
Image design Lavender
Read & copy

“In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright.”

William Cullen Bryant · To a Waterfowl · 1818
Meaning & context

The speaker takes the waterfowl’s guided migration as a religious image of trust that his own solitary path can also have direction.

Source details

“To a Waterfowl,” represented in Project Gutenberg #29700. The closing lines explicitly infer providential guidance from the bird’s flight; the claim remains Christian-inflected lyric reflection, not evidence about supernatural intervention.

Source identified
It is eternity now.
Image design Golden Hour
Read & copy

“It is eternity now.”

Richard Jefferies · The Story of My Heart · 1883
Meaning & context

Jefferies collapses ordinary chronological distinctions into an intensely experienced present, describing the current moment as participation in eternity rather than a point merely passing toward the future.

Source details

The Story of My Heart (1883), Chapter III, Project Gutenberg #2317. The inherited Chapter I note is corrected: ‘It is eternity now’ occurs in Jefferies’s tumulus meditation after he writes that, recognising his inner consciousness / psyche, he cannot understand time. It is speculative spiritual autobiography and metaphysical-poetic reflection, not a scientific theory of time, physics or consciousness.

Source identified
It is never too late to be wise;
Image design Linen
Read & copy

“It is never too late to be wise;”

Daniel Defoe · Robinson Crusoe · 1719
Meaning & context

Crusoe reflects that judgment can improve even after years of mistakes, using later experience to reinterpret earlier choices and warnings he once ignored.

Source details

Robinson Crusoe, represented by Project Gutenberg #38705. Crusoe says this while reflecting on what he interprets as secret intimations of Providence; the sentence is fictional first-person religious reflection, not evidence for supernatural guidance.

Source identified
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.
Image design Lavender
Read & copy

“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.”

John Keats · Endymion · 1818
Meaning & context

Keats opens the poem by claiming that beauty can continue to give delight beyond the instant in which it is first encountered.

Source details

Endymion: A Poetic Romance (1818), Book I, line 1, Project Gutenberg #24280, reproducing the Taylor and Hessey 1818 text. “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever” opens the poem’s mythic Romantic meditation on beauty; the statement remains a poetic proposition rather than empirical evidence that every aesthetic experience produces permanent happiness.

Source identified
life is the end and aim of consumption.
Image design Midnight
Read & copy

“life is the end and aim of consumption.”

John Ruskin · Unto This Last and Other Essays on Political Economy · 1862
Meaning & context

Consumption is judged by what it ultimately does for human life, making economic activity a means rather than an end in itself within Ruskin’s argument.

Source details

Unto This Last, fourth essay; Project Gutenberg #36541. The line follows Ruskin’s distinction between production and consumption and retains the nineteenth-century political-economy setting.