My flagged passages for this month are…….
The Moon’s now rising in the sky.
Shall we go to the woods nearby…..
Napoleon is entirely made of willow.
There swings the dreadful skeleton of some poor lover who hanged himself.
God himself has not been able to make the two ends meet.
Marius in LOVE! I just can’t see it.
Le Couche et al Mouche
Jean de La Fontaine collected fables from a wide variety of sources, both Western and Eastern, and adapted them into French free verse. They were issued under the general title of Fables in several volumes from 1668 to 1694 and are considered classics of French literature.
The pages 995-997 have a beautiful love poem……..
putting one of the paragraphs here:
The first time in my blissful garret, That I stole a kiss from your burning lips, Left you all dishevelled and flushed, Left me white my faith restored……
Indeed it was dreadful. But what was he to do? Live without Cosette- that he could not do.
Logic marries with turmoil, and the syllogistic thread runs through the dismal tumult of thought without breaking. this was Marius’s state of mind.
“I think I was a little in love with you.” She tried to smile again, and died.
Éponine.
People’s apprehensions are allayed almost as easily as they are raised.
Cosette’s unusual name……
June 1848 the greatest street battle the world had ever seen.
The dregs of the city make the law of the world.
In a desperate plight, what else can you do but talk?
The Hare and the Frogs.
Hares were tired of being afraid. They went to drown themselves when they scared some frogs. Fear no more.
The Hares were so persecuted by the other beasts, they did not know where to go. As soon as they saw a single animal approach them, off they used to run. One day they saw a troop of wild Horses stampeding about, and in quite a panic all the Hares scuttled off to a lake hard by, determined to drown themselves rather than live in such a continual state of fear. But just as they got near the bank of the lake, a troop of Frogs, frightened in their turn by the approach of the Hares scuttled off, and jumped into the water. “Truly,” said one of the Hares, “things are not so bad as they seem”
“There is always someone worse off than yourself.”
There is no coward on earth who cannot find another more cowardly than himself.
Cesar is stabbed by senators. Christ is treated with contempt by lackeys. In the greater outrage you sense the deity.
Suicides like the one that is about to take place here are sublime, but suicide has a narrow compass that is not to be broadened.
Jean Valjean had just arrived inside the barricade.
The point of intersection between all these allied sovereignties is called Society.
For if Liberty is the summit, equality is the base. Equality, citizens, doesn’t mean vegetation all of one height, a society of huge blades of grass and tiny oak trees, a collection of mutual emasculating jealousies. It is in civil terms, all who have some aptitude having the same opportunity; in political terms, all votes having the same weight: in religious terms, all consciences having the same right. Equality has an agency; free and compulsory education. The right to the alphabet, that’s where to start. Primary schooling imposed on all, secondary schooling offered to all, that’s the rule of law. From identical schooling will come an equal society. Yes teaching! Light! Light! Everything comes from light and returns to it.
Only he felt a pang in his heart when he thought of Cosette.
The only salvation for the defeated is to have no hope of salvation.
