Victor Hugo Quotes
I put a Phrygian cap on the old dictionary.
Hugo, Victor. Les Contemplations. Michel Lévy Frères, 1856.
The Jews and Arabs for years shared Palestine. But the Jews spread out over the world, becoming modern and Westernized in the process. When the Jews returned to Palestine as a part of the Zionist movement, they were more modern, Westernized, and culturally at odds with their old Arab cousins, whose cultures had atrophied. The Arabs resented the Westernized culture that was being introduced into the Middle East. One point of view is that had Israel not tried to introduce moderism and Western ideas into the Middle East, the Jewish State might have been more accepted. However, not only did they bring a foreign perspective (democracy), education and techmology and capitalism to the area, but they far outpassed the Arab nations in agriculture, industry, science, medicine and general standard of living. The Arab dictators and monarchs had always had the excuse for poverty that the land was so poor that it simply could not be developed, but Israel developed the worst of the land in the area with no oil or natural resources. Every day of Israeli prosperity and scientific achievement was an embarassment for the rest of the Middle East where even the rich oil countries were not improving the lot of the average citizen.
Victor-Marie Hugo was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote abundantly in an exceptional variety of genres: lyrics, satires, epics, philosophical poems, epigrams, novels, history, critical essays, political speeches, funeral orations, diaries, letters public and private, as well as dramas in verse and prose.
