Great Throughts Treasury

"The pleasures of love are always in proportion to our fears."

"The political interests of the middle imagination is a pistol in the middle of a concert."

"The Russians imitate French ways, but always at a distance of fifty years."

"The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same."

"The tyranny of public opinion (and what an opinion!) is as fatuous in the small towns of France as it is in the United States of America."

"There is no such thing as "natural law": this expression is nothing but old nonsense... Prior to laws, what is natural is only the strength of the lion, or the need of the creature suffering from hunger or cold; in short, need."

"There are as many styles of beauty as there are visions of happiness."

"There were a Te Deum, clouds of incense, endless volleys of musketry and artillery; the peasants were frantic with joy and piety. Such a day undoes the work of a hundred numbers of the Jacobin papers."

"There's a difference between interest and commitment. When you're interested in doing something, you do it only when circumstance permit. When you're committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results."

"These gentlemen, although of the highest nobility,' thought Julien, 'are not in the least boring like the people who come to dine with M. de La Mole; and I can see why,' he added a moment later,'they are not ashamed to be indecent."

"They were completely vague. They expressed everything and nothing. 'It is the Æolian harp of style,' thought Julien. 'Amid the most lofty thoughts about annihilation, death, the infinite, etc., I can see no reality save a shocking fear of ridicule."

"This is the curse of our age, even the strangest aberrations are no cure for boredom."

"This is the ugly violent impression on a soul to love what is beautiful."

"To be loved at first sight, a man should have at the same time something to respect and something to pity in his face."

"True love makes the thought of death frequent, easy, without terrors; it merely becomes the standard of comparison, the price one would pay for many things."

"Want of exercise was beginning to affect his health and to give him the weak and excitable character of a young German student."

"War was then no longer this noble and unified outburst of souls in love with glory that he had imagined from Napoleon's proclamations."

"What I admired in its presumption that differ from other rural boys! Well, I lived it enough to see that difference bears hatred."

"What is really beautiful must always be true."

"When a man leaves his mistress, he runs the risk of being betrayed two or three times daily."

"When you want to court a woman, court her sister first"

"Who knows whether it is not true that phosphorus and mind are not the same thing?"

"Wit lasts no more than two centuries."

"Women are always eagerly on the lookout for any emotion"

"Wounded pride can take a rich young man far who is surrounded by flatterers since birth."

"Your career will be a painful one. I divine something in you which offends the vulgar."

"A burst of laughter rude, a shrug, accompanied by some trivial maxim on the folly of women had consistently received the confidences of such troubles, as the need for effusion had scope to do its husband in the early years of their marriage. These kinds of jokes, especially when they wore on diseases of his children, turned the dagger in the heart of Madame de Renal. This is what she found instead of eager and honeyed flatteries of the Jesuitical convent where she had spent his youth."

"A man may meet a woman and be shocked by her ugliness. Soon, if she is natural and unaffected, her expression makes him overlook the faults of her features. He begins to find her charming, it enters his head that she might be loved, and a week later he is living in hope. The following week he has been snubbed into despair, and the week afterwards he has gone mad. (Chapter 17)"

"A man who is half an idiot, but who keeps a sharp lookout and acts prudently all his life, often enjoys the pleasure of triumphing over men of more imagination than he."

"A novel is a mirror carried along a high road. At one moment it reflects to your vision the azure skies at another the mire of the puddles at your feet. And the man who carries this mirror in his pack will be accused by you of being immoral! His mirror shews the mire, and you blame the mirror! Rather blame that high road upon which the puddle lies, still more the inspector of roads who allows the water to gather and the puddle to form."

"A novel is a mirror carried along a main road"

"A strange effect of marriage, such as the nineteenth century has made it! The boredom of married life inevitably destroys love, when love has preceded marriage. And yet, as a philosopher has observed, it speedily brings about, among people who are rich enough not to have to work, an intense boredom with all quiet forms of enjoyment. And it is only dried up hearts, among women, that it does not predispose to love."

"After I learned to judge and not to be deceived by empty words, forgot to tell that to a commoner, habit is a crime; because any offends common sense."

"A novel is like a bow, and the violin that produces the sound is the reader?s soul."

"At a distance, we cannot conceive of the authority of a despot who knows all his subjects on sight."

"At La Scala it is customary to take no more than twenty minutes for those little visits one pays to boxes."

"Beauty is the promise of happiness"

"Because one has little fear of shocking vanity in Italy, people adopt an intimate tone very quickly and discuss personal things."

"But what good friends call them enemies? This thing is ugly, much uglier since it's true. And yet, there is only moral teachers that we have, and without them, what would we do?"

"Chelan had acted as imprudently for Julien as he had for himself. He had him Given the habit of reasoning correctly, and of not being put off by empty words, but neglected to tell him he had That this habit was a crime in the person of no Importance, Every piece of logical reasoning Since is offensive."

"Alta Rech sees himself. And did not look down, you will not see the abyss."

"An ephemeral blowfly born nine morning, during the long summer days, to die at five in the evening; how could she understand the word night? Give him five hours of life, and she will see and understand what's at night."

"An absence of mistrust is not enough; there must be a weariness of mistrusting, and, as it were, courage must be impatient with the hazards of life. You are unconsciously bored by living without loving, and convinced in spite of yourself by the examples of others. You have overcome all life's fears, and are no longer content with the gloomy happiness which pride affords: you have conceived an ideal without knowing it."

"An insane self-consciousness made him commit thousands of blunders."

"Could anything possibly be more humorous than believing in the depth or in the depravity of the Parisian character?"

"Each man for himself in that desert of egoism which is called life."

"Every great action is extreme when it is undertaken. Only after it has been accomplished does it seem possible to those creatures of more common stuff."

"Good music is not mistaken, and goes straight to the bottom of the soul searching grief that devours us."

"Has he written to you?' 'He writes frequently.' 'Shew me his letters this instant, I order you'; and M. de Renal added six feet to his stature."

"Has there ever been anything more absurd than a belief in the profundity or the wickedness of the Parisian character?"