THE HALFWAY MARK
The novel is divided into five volumes, each volume divided into several books, and subdivided into chapters, for a total of 48 books and 365 chapters.
My June reading was off and on …whoops. However several of my hour reading sessions to catch up were lovely. I escaped into the language.
I do so love classical literature. As I am a huge lover of words.
The following contains quotes, favorite passages or sentences that made me pause and think.
Enjoy.
Light is wholesome. Light is animating.
This child never felt so happy as on the street. The pavements were less hard to him than his mother’s heart.
Let us explain who Monsieur Marius was……
As well as a LIBRARY next to his bedroom……
In his youth he had been one of those men who are always deceived by their wives and never by their mistresses, because they are at once the most surely of husbands
and the most solicitous of lovers.
The French Revolution is a bunch of scoundrels.
It is to be noted that the age of circumlocution in verse was the age of crudeness in pose.
When a man is passionately fond of women, and has a wife of his own he does not much care for, who is ugly and bad tempered, lawfully wedded, fully entitled, well versed in the statute book, and jealous when occasion arises, there is only one way of dealing with with the situation if he wants any peace, and that is to let his wife control the purse strings.
Si canimus silvas, silva sint consule dignae
If we are to sing of the woods, let them be worthy of a consul.
RULE: NO VISITORS BEFORE EVENING
The peculiarity of prudery is to increase the guard in inverse proportion to the threat of the fortress.
This was his grandson. We shall return to this child.
There was no where he could go unless he could hold sway.
Tuck your shirt-tails in your trousers,
Never let them flap about.
Patriots with the white flag flying?
Never let the word get out.
Buanopartist- referred to as LIBERALS. The ultimate INSULT.
‘THE BANE OF HIS FAMILY”
….and not being allowed to have his child, he had taken to loving flowers.
And the father replied with very loving letters that the grandfather stuffed into his pocket unread.
Such was the physiognomy of the salons of those distant and innocent days when Monsieur Martainville had more wit than Voltaire.
All in all he was an ardent and cold-hearted boy, noble, generous, proud, religious, impassioned, callously self-respecting, ferociously pure.
Marius came to know everything about that rare, excellent and gentle man, that sort of lion-lamb that had been his father.
From infancy he had been imbued with the way of the men of 1814 judged Bonaparte.
It was thought to have been observed that he was wearing on his chest, around his neck, underneath his shirt, something attached to a black ribbon.
A baron like this gentlemen and a bourgeois like me cannot remain under the same roof.
What was to become of Marius?
Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram
THOU ART PETER and upon this rock petra I will build my church.
Matthew 16:18
He knew Italian, Latin, Greek and Hebrew and he used this knowledge to read only four poets: Dante, Juvenal, Aeschylus and Isaiah.
All day long he delved into social issues……freedom of thought, freedom in love, education, penal justice, poverty, the right of association, property, production and distribution, the earth conundrum that casts in shadow the human ant-hill.
They’re not bourgeois they’re peasants, that’s why they’ve got some intelligence.
He was on intimate terms with catastrophe and so familiar with misfortune he called it by its nickname “Hello, Lady Jinx” he would say.
Long Live Henry IV, ‘I love girls and loves good wine’.
Psalm 111:10 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
ONE SANCTIMONIOUS OLD BIDDY GOSSIPING ABOUT ANOTHER IS MORE VENOMOUS THAN THE ASP OR THE BLUE KRAIT.
These great men are strangely flawed……..All history is nothing but endless repetition.
I don’t much care for that slave-owning brother. Take away cotton is king and what’s left of America…..
Gentlemen of the human race, I’ve nothing to say to you. Brussels is where the most beer is consumed, Stockholm the most brandy, Madrid the most chocolate, Amsterdam the most gin, London the most wine, Constantinople the most coffee, Paris the most absinthe. That’s all you need to know, in short Paris wins.
“Echo, planintive nymph…..” Granraire sang under his breath.
the foot note on this referred to Metamorphoses, Book III:359-401
Echo still had a body then and was not merely a voice. But though she was garrulous, she had no other trick of speech than she has now: she can repeat the last words out of many. Juno made her like that, because often when she might have caught the nymphs lying beneath her Jupiter, on the mountain slopes, Echo knowingly held her in long conversations, while the nymphs fled. When Saturnia realised this she said ‘I shall give you less power over that tongue by which I have been deluded, and the briefest ability to speak’ and what she threatened she did. Echo only repeats the last of what is spoken and returns the words she hears.Now when she saw Narcissus wandering through the remote fields, she was inflamed, following him secretly, and the more she followed the closer she burned with fire, no differently than inflammable sulphur, pasted round the tops of torches, catches fire, when a flame is brought near it. O how often she wants to get close to him with seductive words, and call him with soft entreaties! Her nature denies it, and will not let her begin, but she is ready for what it will allow her to do, to wait for sounds, to which she can return words.By chance, the boy, separated from his faithful band of followers, had called out ‘Is anyone here?’ and ‘Here’ Echo replied. He is astonished, and glances everywhere, and shouts in a loud voice ‘Come to me!’ She calls as he calls. He looks back, and no one appearing behind, asks ‘Why do you run from me?’ and receives the same words as he speaks. He stands still, and deceived by the likeness to an answering voice, says ‘Here, let us meet together’. And, never answering to another sound more gladly, Echo replies ‘Together’, and to assist her words comes out of the woods to put her arms around his neck, in longing. He runs from her, and running cries ‘Away with these encircling hands! May I die before what’s mine is yours. She answers, only ‘What’s mine is yours!’Scorned, she wanders in the woods and hides her face in shame among the leaves, and from that time on lives in lonely caves. But still her love endures, increased by the sadness of rejection. Her sleepless thoughts waste her sad form, and her body’s strength vanishes into the air. Only her bones and the sound of her voice are left. Her voice remains, her bones, they say, were changed to shapes of stone. She hides in the woods, no longer to be seen on the hills, but to be heard by everyone. It is sound that lives in her.
A woman who laughs is such a delight.
The wonderful thing about the collision between young minds is you can never predict the spark or anticipate the flash.
‘Quia nominor leo” Because my name is lion.
The Heifer, Goat, Sheep, and Lion. A partnership with men in power
We cannot build upon an hour.
This Fable proves the fact too true:
An Heifer, Goat, and harmless Ewe,
Were with the Lion as allies,
To raise in desert woods supplies.
There, when they jointly had the luck
To take a most enormous buck,
The Lion first the parts disposed,
And then his royal will disclosed.
” The first, as Lion hight, I crave;
The next you yield to me, as brave;
The third is my peculiar due,
As being stronger far than you;
The fourth you likewise will renounce,
For him that touches, I shall trounce.”
Thus rank unrighteousness and force
Seized all the prey without remorse.
The Fables of Phaedrus
‘If you weren’t a fool, you’d know it was impossible to be both a baron and a lawyer.’
THAT IS IT FOR THE MONTH. PHEW.
