novelists-from-france

"Il n'est pas permis à tous les hommes d'être grands, mais ils peuvent tous être bons."

"Dans les espaces immenses de l'erreur, la vérité n'est qu'un point. Qui l'a saisi, ce point unique?"

"En général le ridicule touche au sublime."

"Ce temps, si court, a des langueurs mortelles Quand l'âme oisive en compte les instans: C'est le travail qui lui donne des ailes."

"Où peut-on être mieux Qu'au sein de sa famille?"

"Le ciel, l'enfer sont dans le cœur de l'homme."

"En général le ridicule touche au sublime, et pour marcher sur la limite qui les sépare, sans la passer jamais, il faut bien prendre garde à soi."

"L'éloquence est dans l'âme, et non dans la parole."

"Je reprends mon bien où je le trouve."

"Quand on n'a pas ce que l'on aime, il faut aimer ce que l'on a."

"Homeliness is the best guardian of a young girl's virtue."

"If you would succeed in the world, it is necessary that, when entering a salon, your vanity should bow to that of others."

"The life of a woman is a long dissimulation. Candor, beauty, freshness, virginity, modesty — a woman has each of these but once. When lost, she must simulate them the rest of her life."

"Constraint is the mother of desires."

"A woman whose great beauty eclipses all others is seen with as many different eyes as there are people who look at her. Pretty women gaze with envy, homely women with spite, old men with regret, young men with transport."

"A secret passion defends the heart of a woman better than her moral sense."

"At twenty, man is less a lover of woman than of women: he is more in love with the sex than with the individual, however charming she may be."

"The heart of youth is reached through the senses; the senses of age are reached through the heart."

"Men call physicians only when they suffer; women, when they are merely afflicted with ennui."

"The prejudices of men emanate from the mind, and may be overcome; the prejudices of women emanate from the heart, and are impregnable."

"Restif de la Bretonne undoubtedly holds a remarkable place in French literature. He was inordinately vain, of extremely relaxed morals, and perhaps not entirely sane. His books were written with haste, and their licence of subject and language renders them quite unfit for general perusal."

"To weep is not always to suffer."

"The ear is the last resort of chastity: after it is expelled from the heart, it takes refuge there."

"Very few people know what love is, and very few of those that do, tell of it."

"The energies of the soul slumber in the vague reveries of hope."

"Unclassifiable, defying any definition, they (the beguines) rejected both marriage and the cloister. They prayed, worked, studied, moved around the city without restrictions, travelled and received friends, owned property, and could pass it on to their sisters. Independent and free. A freedom that no woman had ever enjoyed before, nor would enjoy for centuries to come. Not all of them were aware of this. But some fought to preserve that freedom. (introduction)"

"She had prayed and made offerings to Mary, who had given birth to Jesus; to Saint Anne, Mary's mother, who, having been barren for twenty years, had been told by an angel that she would give birth to a daughter; to Saint Cunegonda who, despite having taken a vow of chastity with her husband, Emperor Henry, prepared miraculous potions to help women conceive. (chap. 19)"

"There are many ways to live one's faith outside the Church. Not all beguines are fortunate enough – or have the opportunity – to be welcomed into large institutions such as the one in Paris. Many live in large groups in small houses in the city centre and work. Others prefer to live alone. Some, the so-called wandering beguines, beg and preach in the streets. (chapter 10)"

"Her husband had slipped a gold ring set with a fine ruby onto her finger, and her mother-in-law had given her a birthing bag which, in her time, she herself had tied to her thigh for the duration of her pregnancy. “It contains a parchment recounting the birth of Margaret of Antioch. It will protect you from a brutal death, as it protected me.” Swallowed by a dragon, Margaret of Antioch had escaped from the beast's belly by piercing its spine with her cross. My son, Hades had thought, will not have to resort to violence to come into the world. When the time is right, I will open myself wide and he will slide out without pain. He will be born with rosy skin and a healthy complexion. (chap. 19)"

"Sous son règne, la France était grande et les Français malheureux."

"Vivre? les serviteurs feront cela pour nous."

"Dis, cher aimé! Veux-tu venir vers ces pays où passent les caravanes, à l'ombre des palmiers de Kachmyr ou de Mysore? Veux-tu venir au Bengale choisir, dans les bazars, des roses, des étoffes et des filles d'Arménie, blanches comme le pelage des hermines? Veux-tu lever des armées soulever le nord de l'Iran, comme un jeune Cyaxare? Ou, plutôt, si nous appareillions pour Ceylan, où sont les blancs éléphants aux tours vermeilles, les aras de feu dans les feuillages, et d'en-soleillées demeures où tombent les pluies des jets d'eau dans les cours de marbre? [...] Quel plaisir d'attacher nos patins d'acier sur les routes de la pâle Suède! ou vers Christiania, dans les sentiers et les fjords éclatants des monts de la Norvège!"

"La Terre, dis-tu? Qu'a-t-elle donc jamais réalisé, cette goutte de fange glacée, dont l'Heure ne sait que mentir au milieu du ciel?"

"If vengeance ever seemed to have any show of justice, it is then when piety and affection constraineth us to remember our fathers unjustly murdered, as the things whereby we are dispensed withal, and which seek the means not to leave treason and murder unpunished; seeing David, a holy and just king, and of nature simple, courteous, and debonair, yet when he died he charged his son Solomon (that succeeded him in his throne) not to suffer certain men that had done him injury to escape unpunished. Not that this holy king (as then ready to die, and to give account before God of all his actions) was careful or desirous of revenge, but to leave this example unto us, that where the prince or country is interested, the desire of revenge cannot by any means (how small soever) bear the title of condemnation, but is rather commendable and worthy of praise; for otherwise the good Kings of Judah, nor others had not pursued them to death, that had offended their predecessors, if God himself had not inspired and engraven that desire within their hearts. Hereof the Athenian laws bear witness, whose custom was to erect images in remembrance of those men that, revenging the injuries of the commonwealth, boldly massacred tyrants and such as troubled the peace and welfare of the citizens."

"As touching magical operations, I will grant them somewhat therein, finding divers histories that write thereof, and that the Bible maketh mention, and forbiddeth the use thereof: yea, the laws of the gentiles and ordinances of emperors have been made against it in such sort, that Mahomet, the great heretic and friend of the devil, by whose subtleties he abused most part of the east countries, hath ordained great punishments for such as use and practice those unlawful and damnable arts."

"[T]he diversities of opinions among that multitude of people being many, yet every man ignorant what would be the issue of that tragedy, none stirred from thence, neither yet attempted to move any tumult, every man fearing his own skin, and, distrusting his neighbor, esteeming each other to be consenting to the massacre."

"I beseech you that shall read this history not to resemble the spider, that feedeth of the corruption that she findith in the flowers and fruits that are in the gardens, whereas the bee gathereth her honey out of the best and fairest flower she can find. For a man that is well brought up should read the lives of whoremongers, drunkards, incestuous, violent, and bloody persons, not to follow their steps and so to defile himself with such uncleanness, but to shun palliardise, abstain the superfluities and drunkenness in banquets, and follow the modesty, courtesy, and continency that recommendeth Hamlet in this discourse, who, while other made good cheer, continued sober; and where all men sought as much as they could to gather together riches and treasure, he, simply accounting riches nothing comparable to honor, sought to gather a multitude of virtues, that might make him equal to those that by them were esteemed as gods; having not as then received the light of the Gospel, that men might see among the barbarians, and them that were far from the knowledge of one only God, that nature was provoked to follow that which is good, and those forward to embrace virtue, for that there was never any nation, how rude or barbarous soever, that took not some pleasure to do that which seemed good, thereby to win praise and commendations, which we have said to be the reward of virtue and good life. I delight to speak of these strange histories, and of people that were unchristened, that the virtue of the rude people may give more splendor to our nation, who, seeing them so complete, wise, prudent, and well advised in their actions, might strive not only to follow (imitation being a small matter), but to surmount them, as our religion surpasseth their superstition, and our age more purged, subtle, and gallant, than the season wherein they lived and made their virtues known."

"It toucheth not the matter herein to discover the parts of divination in man, and whether this Prince, by reason of his over-great melancholy, had received those impressions, divining that which never any but himself had before declared, like the philosophers who, discoursing of divers deep points of philosophy, attribute the force of those divinations to such as are Saturnists by complexion, who oftentimes speak of things which, their fury ceasing, they then already can hardly understand who are the pronouncers."

"I mean not to relate that which divers men believe, that a reasonable soul becometh the habitation of a meaner sort of devils, by whom men learn the secrets of things natural; and much less do I account of the supposed governors of the world feigned by magicians, by whose means they brag to effect marvelous things."

"Who was ever sorrowful to behold the murderer of innocents brought to his end, or what man weepeth to see a just massacre done upon a tyrant, usurper, villain, and bloody personage?"

"Hamlet, in this sort counterfeiting the madman, many times did divers actions of great and deep consideration, and often made such and so fit answers that a wise man would soon have judged from what spirit so fine an invention might procced, for that standing by the fire and sharpening sticks like poniards and pricks, one in smiling manner asked him wherefore he made those little staves so sharp at the points? "I prepare," saith he, "piercing darts and sharp arrows to revenge my father's death.""

"[T]he nature of all young men, especially such as are brought up wantonly, is so transported with the desires of the flesh, and entereth so greedily into the pleasures thereof, that it is almost impossible to cover the foul affection, neither yet to dissemble or hide the same by art or industry, much less to shun it. What cunning or subtlety soever they use to cloak their pretense, seeing occasion offered, and that in secret, especially in the most enticing sin that reigneth in man, they cannot choose (being constrained by voluptuousness) but fall to natural effect and working."

"Is this the part of a queen and daughter to a king? To live like a brute beast and like a mare that yieldeth her body to the horse that hath beaten her companion away, to follow the pleasure of an abominable king that hath murdered a far more honester and better man than himself in massacring Horvendile, the honor and glory of the Danes, who are now esteemed of no force nor valor at all, since the shining splendor of knighthood was brought to an end by the most wickedest and cruellest villain living upon earth? [...] O Queen Geruthe, it is the part of a bitch to couple with many and desire acquaintance of divers mastiffs; it is licentiousness only that hath made you deface out of your mind the memory of the valor and virtues of the good king your husband and my father. [...] It is not the part of a woman, much less of a princess, in whom all modesty, courtesy, compassion, and love ought to abound, thus to leave her dear child to fortune in the bloody and murderous hands of a villain and traitor. Brute beasts do not so, for lions, tigers, ounces, and leopards fight for the safety and defense of their whelps; and birds that have beaks, claws, and wings resist such as would ravish them of their young ones."

"[W]here shall a man find a more wicked and bold woman than a great personage once having loosed the bands of honor and honesty? [...] But I will not stand to gaze and marvel at women, for that there are many which seek to blaze and set them forth, in which their writings they spare not to blame them all for the faults of some one or few women. But I say that either nature ought to have bereaved man of that opinion to accompany with women, or else to endow them with such spirits as that they may easily support the crosses they endure, without complaining so often and so strangely, seeing it is their own beastliness that overthrows them. For if it be so that a woman is so imperfect a creature as they make her to be, and that they know this beast to be so hard to be tamed as they affirm, why then are they so foolish to preserve them, and so dull and brutish as to trust their deceitful and wanton embracings?"

"[T]he desire of bearing sovereign rule and authority respecteth neither blood nor amity, nor caring for virtue, as being wholly without respect of laws, or majesty divine; for it is not possible that he which invadeth the country and taketh away the riches of another man without cause or reason should know or fear God."

"[T]he counselor entered secretly into the Queen's chamber and there hid himself behind the arras, not long before the Queen and Hamlet came thither, who, being crafty and politic, as soon as he was within the chamber, doubting some treason, and fearing if he should speak severely and wisely to his mother touching his secret practices he should be understood and by that means intercepted, used his ordinary manner of dissimulation, and began to crow like a cock, beating with his arms in such manner as cocks use to strike with their wings, upon the hangings of the chamber; whereby, feeling something stirring under them, he cried, "A rat, a rat," and presently drawing his sword thrust it into the hangings, which done, pulled the counselor half dead out by the heels, made an end of killing him, and, being slain, cut his body in pieces, which he caused to be boiled and then cast it into an open vault or privy, that so it might serve for food to the hogs."

"Do they show science or wit? If their works are bad, they are jeered at; if they are good, they are taken from them, and they are left only with ridicule for letting themselves be called authors."

"Do they display science or pretty wit? If their works are bad, they get a bird; if they are good, one robbed them; they keep merely the ridiculousness of having presented themselves as the authoresses."

"All women are, in some degree, poets in imagination, angels in hearts, and diplomatists in mind."

"Fear is a natural passion, which, like all the others, is in itself neither bad nor good, but bad when it is excessive and disquieting, good when it is subordinate to reason."