Death always brings with it a kind of stupefaction, so difficult is it for the human mind to realize and resign itself to the blank and utter nothingness.
I was born longing to die.
But shouldn’t a man know everything, excel at a host of different activities, initiate you into the intensities of passion, the refinements of life, all its mysteries? Yet this man taught her nothing, knew nothing, wished for nothing. He thought she was happy; and she resented him for that settled calm, that ponderous serenity, that very happiness which she herself brought him.
But her own life was as cold as an attic with a north-facing window, and boredom, that silent spider, was spinning its web in the darkness in every corner of.
So that was all love was! That was all a woman was! Good Lord, why do we still hunger even when we are sated? Why so many aspirations and so many disappointments? Why is man’s heart so big and life so small? There are days when even the love of the angels would not suffice it, and in a single hour it grows weary of all the caresses of earth.
One must not touch idols; the gilt rubs off on one’s hands.
A man, at least, is free; he may travel over passions and over countries, overcome obstacles, taste of the most far-away pleasures. But a woman is always hampered. At once inert and flexible, she has against her the weakness of the flesh and legal dependence. Her will, like the veil of her bonnet, held by a string, flutters in every wind; there is always some desire that draws her, some conventionality that restrains.
First he anointed her eyes, once so covetous of all earthly luxuries; then her nostrils, so gluttonous of caressing breezes and amorous scents; then her mouth, so prompt to lie, so defiant in pride, so loud in lust; then her hands that had thrilled to voluptuous contacts; and finally the soles of her feet, once so swift when she had hastened to slake her desires, and now never to walk again.
The tenderness of the old days came back to their hearts, full and silent as the flowing river, with the softness of the perfume of the syringas, and threw across their memories shadows more immense and more sombre than those of the still willows that lengthened out over the grass.
I laugh at everything, even at that which I love the most. There is no fact, thing, feeling or person over which I have not blithely run my clownishness, like an iron roller imparting sheen to cloth.
A man so habituated to corruption that he would happily pay for the pleasure of selling himself.
I understand,” said the notary; “a man of science can’t be worried with the practical details of life.
She repeated, “I have a lover! a lover!” delighting at the idea as if a second puberty had come to her.
If our pains were only of some use to someone, we should find consolation in the thought of the sacrifice.
Love, she believed, should come on all at once, with great claps of thunder and lightning – a hurricane from heaven that falls upon your life, turns it topsy-turvy, tears up intentions like leaves and sweeps your whole heart into the abyss.
As to texts, look at history; it, is known that all the texts have been falsified by the Jesuits.
Everybody can’t be rich! No fortune can hold out against waste!
A blow lasts a minute but is anticipated for months – our passions are like volcanoes: always rumbling but only intermittently erupting.
How oft the warmth of the sun above Makes a pretty young girl dream of love.
All these great artists burn the candle at both ends; they require a dissolute life, that suits the imagination to some extent.