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Quotes by French Authors
"There is no growth except in the fulfillment of obligations."
"Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself."
"Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission."
"The last thing one knows when writing a book is what to put first."
"Man who waits for roast duck to fly into mouth must wait very, very long time."
"Verse, singing, and speech have a common origin."
"A man's life is interesting primarily when he has failed - I well know. For it's a sign that he tried to surpass himself."
"All these buildings are like mountains I would like to climb, but I am forbidden."
"Cowardice is the mother of cruelty."
"Think of color, pitch, loudness, heaviness, and hotness. Each is the topic of a branch of physics."
"The narration, in fact, doubles the drama with a commentary without which no mise en scene would be possible."
"Do not forget, do not ever forget, that you have promised me to use the money to make yourself an honest man.'Valjean, who did not recall having made any promise, was silent. The bishop had spoken the words slowly and deliberately. He concluded with a solemn emphasis:Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to what is evil but to what is good. I have bought your soul to save it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God."
"It is easier to appear worthy of a position one does not hold, than of the office which one fills."
"It was an odd experience, this bringing to life of pages born of my pen and forgotten. From time to time they interested me -- they surprised me as much as if someone else had written them; yet I recognized the vocabulary, the shape of the sentences, the drive, the elliptical forms, the mannerisms. These pages were soaked through and through with my self -- there was a sickening intimacy about it, like the smell of a bedroom in which one has been shut up too long."
"Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author."
"With heart at rest I climbed the citadel'sSteep height, and saw the city as from a tower,Hospital, brothel, prison, and such hells,Where evil comes up softly like a flower.Thou knowest, O Satan, patron of my pain,Not for vain tears I went up at that hour;But like an old sad faithful lecher, fainTo drink delight of that enormous trullWhose hellish beauty makes me young again.Whether thou sleep, with heavy vapors full,Sodden with day, or, new appareled, standIn gold-laced veils of evening beautiful,I love thee, infamous city! Harlots andHunted have pleasures of their own to give,The vulgar herd can never understand."
"A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing."
"Men are not corrupted by the exercise of power, or debased by the habit of obedience; but by the exercise of a power which they believe to be illegitimate, and by obedience to a rule which they consider to be usurped and oppressive."
"... when she called to mind all this utter and crushing misery that had come upon my aunts' old music-master, she was moved to very real grief, and shuddered to think of that other grief, so different in its bitterness, which Mlle. Vinteuil must now be feeling, tinged with remorse at having virtually killed her father."
"Sometimes, in a daze, they completely dismantled the cadaver, then found themselves hard put to it to fit the pieces together again."
"No nation has friends only interests."
"There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to."
"Americans seem sometimes to believe that if you are a thinker you must be a frowning bore, because thinking is so damn serious."
"All pain is a punishment, and every punishment is inflicted for love as much as for justice."
"Dite all'Angelo che veglierA sulla vostra vita, Morrel, di pregare qualche volta per un uomo che, simile a Satana, per un momento si A creduto simile a Dio e ha riconosciuto, con tutta l'umiltA di un cristiano, che nelle mani di Dio soltanto sta il supremo potere e la infinita sapienza."
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