A chrestomathy is a collection of choice literary
passages.
All of the following quotes are from PERE GORIOT,
an 1835 French novel written by Honore de Balzac.
Upon request, I will make available all pages quoted plus
the edition of the book and its translator.
This editor is responsible for the highlighting.
The innkeeper distributed, with astronomical precision, the exact proportion of respect and attention due to the varying amounts the residents paid for their board...She was like many other people who cannot trust their own kin and put themselves at the mercy of the next chance comer...It is only human nature to inflict suffering on anything that will endure suffering, whether by reason of its genuine humility, or indifference, or sheer helplessness.
Little minds find gratification for their feelings, benevolent or otherwise, by a constant exercise of petty ingenuity...It is one of the most detestable habits of a Lilliputian mind to credit other people with its own malignant pettiness...With the faculty for severe logic sedulously cultivated by elderly women during long evenings of gossip till they can always find an hypothesis to fit all circum-stances...“If you set yourself to carry the heights of heaven, you must face God.”
The execution of his plans was sure to be marred by the vertigo that seizes on youth when youth sees itself alone on a wide sea, uncertain how to spend its energies...Anything and everything serves to keep up a game of shuttlecock with words and ideas.
There are men who feel more at their ease when they stand up before another man who threatens their lives with sword or pistol than in the presence of a woman who, after two hours of lamentations and reproaches, falls into a dead swoon and requires salts.
“I am confessing my sins, and it would be impossible to kneel in a more charming confessional; you commit your sins in one drawing room, and receive absolution for them in another”...For twenty years he had given his whole heart to them; he gave them all his fortune too. The lemon was squeezed; the girls left the rest in the gutter.
A friend is ready to bring the tidings and probe your heart with the point of a dagger while calling on you to admire the handle...“The world is a slough. Let us try to live on the heights above it.”
“There is nothing you may not aspire to. You will go everywhere, and you will find out what the world is–an assemblage of fools and knaves”...“If you do not mean to be deceived by puppets, you must go behind and see the whole show, and not peep through holes in the curtain.”
From the point of view of a man who, after studying the world very closely, sees that there are but two alternatives–stupid obedience or revolt...“Don’t stick to your opinions any more than to your words. If anyone asks you for them, let him have them–at a price. A man who prides himself on going in a straight line through life is an idiot who believes in infallibility.”
When bent upon wrongdoing, youth does not behold itself in the mirror of consciousness...Women are true to themselves even through their grossest deceit, because their actions are prompted by a natural impulse...Men do not know how many flowers are mown down in a young woman’s soul by the first stroke of treachery.
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I had a dream about Ohio in 1906:
Dawn Powell's peers played pick-up stix
Or cowboys & indians with a potato sack
While ten-year old Dawn read Honore de Balzac
The next Dawn Powell page is here.
This editor is responsible for the highlighting.
The innkeeper distributed, with astronomical precision, the exact proportion of respect and attention due to the varying amounts the residents paid for their board...She was like many other people who cannot trust their own kin and put themselves at the mercy of the next chance comer...It is only human nature to inflict suffering on anything that will endure suffering, whether by reason of its genuine humility, or indifference, or sheer helplessness.
Little minds find gratification for their feelings, benevolent or otherwise, by a constant exercise of petty ingenuity...It is one of the most detestable habits of a Lilliputian mind to credit other people with its own malignant pettiness...With the faculty for severe logic sedulously cultivated by elderly women during long evenings of gossip till they can always find an hypothesis to fit all circum-stances...“If you set yourself to carry the heights of heaven, you must face God.”
The execution of his plans was sure to be marred by the vertigo that seizes on youth when youth sees itself alone on a wide sea, uncertain how to spend its energies...Anything and everything serves to keep up a game of shuttlecock with words and ideas.
There are men who feel more at their ease when they stand up before another man who threatens their lives with sword or pistol than in the presence of a woman who, after two hours of lamentations and reproaches, falls into a dead swoon and requires salts.
“I am confessing my sins, and it would be impossible to kneel in a more charming confessional; you commit your sins in one drawing room, and receive absolution for them in another”...For twenty years he had given his whole heart to them; he gave them all his fortune too. The lemon was squeezed; the girls left the rest in the gutter.
A friend is ready to bring the tidings and probe your heart with the point of a dagger while calling on you to admire the handle...“The world is a slough. Let us try to live on the heights above it.”
“There is nothing you may not aspire to. You will go everywhere, and you will find out what the world is–an assemblage of fools and knaves”...“If you do not mean to be deceived by puppets, you must go behind and see the whole show, and not peep through holes in the curtain.”
From the point of view of a man who, after studying the world very closely, sees that there are but two alternatives–stupid obedience or revolt...“Don’t stick to your opinions any more than to your words. If anyone asks you for them, let him have them–at a price. A man who prides himself on going in a straight line through life is an idiot who believes in infallibility.”
When bent upon wrongdoing, youth does not behold itself in the mirror of consciousness...Women are true to themselves even through their grossest deceit, because their actions are prompted by a natural impulse...Men do not know how many flowers are mown down in a young woman’s soul by the first stroke of treachery.
___________________________
___________________________
___________________________
I had a dream about Ohio in 1906:
Dawn Powell's peers played pick-up stix
Or cowboys & indians with a potato sack
While ten-year old Dawn read Honore de Balzac
The next Dawn Powell page is here.
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