What is the use of fine feelings when pitted against the power of instinct? And what chance does modest restraint have against that of natural desire?
Some people never have any luck. All at once, as though a thick veil had been whisked aside, he clearly saw the wretchedness – the bottomless, monotonous wretchedness – of his existence. The wretchedness which had been, which was, and which was yet to come. His last days indistinguishable from the first, with nothing ahead of him or behind him or around him, nothing in his heart, nothing anywhere.
Daylight does not lend itself to terror: objects and people are plain to see; and we encounter there only those things which dare to show themselves in the glare of day. But night, opaque night denser than walls, night, empty and infinite and so black and fathomless that terrifying things reach out and touch us, night when we feel horror stirring, mysteriously prowling – night seemed to him to hide some unknown, imminent, threatening danger. What could it be?
They were so absorbed in their plotting that they did not hear Boule de Suif return. But the Comte’s whispered ‘shh!’ made them all look up. There she was. A sudden silence fell, and at first a feeling of embarrassment prevented them from speaking to her. At last, however, the Comtesse, more of an adept than the rest in social duplicity, asked her: ‘Did you enjoy the christening?
At times it seemed to her that other people’s hearts must have arms like their bodies, loving arms extended to clasp and hold – and her own heart? All it had was eyes, that heart of hers.
For some years he had felt weighing on him the burden of loneliness which sometimes overwhelms old bachelors. He had been strong, active and cheerful, spending his days in sport, and his evenings in amusement. Now he was growing dull, and no longer took interest in anything. Exercise tired him, suppers and even dinners made him ill, while women bored him as much as they had once amused him.
And involuntarily I compared the childish sarcasm, the religious sarcasm of Voltaire with the irresistible irony of the German philosopher whose influence is henceforth ineffaceable.
How strange and changeful is life! How small a thing is needed to make or ruin us!
Several sailors, sheltered behind the curved bottoms of their boats, were watching this battle of the sky and the sea.
Then, one by one, they went away, for night was falling on the storm, wrapping in shadows the raging ocean and all the battling elements.
Aquello que se ama con violencia acaba siempre por matarle a uno.
But this pleasure was not unalloyed with pain, and it seemed as if the universal joy of the awakening world could now only impart a delight which was half sorrow to her grief-crushed soul and withered heart.
Monsieur, beware of love! It is lying in ambush everywhere; it is watching for you at every corner; all its snares are laid, all its weapons are sharpened, all its guiles are prepared! Beware of love! Beware of love! It is more dangerous than brandy, bronchitis or pleurisy! It never forgives and makes everybody commit irreparable follies.
I think I have already told you that there are certain things which it is not necessary to discuss, and this is one of them.
Yes, but I say that Nature is our enemy, that we must always fight against Nature, for she is continually bringing us back to an animal state. You may be sure that God has not put anything on this earth that is clean, pretty, elegant or accessory to our ideal; the human brain has done it.
Is it not rather the touch of Love, of Love the Mysterious, who seeks constantly to unite two beings, who tries his strength the instant he has put a man and a woman face to face?
Horrible, this love to which he was now chained, a love without purpose and without aim, without joy and without triumph, a love that sickened, weakened, laid waste to everything, a love without sweetness and without intoxication, breeding nothing but regret and foreboding, tears and pain, hinting at the ecstasy of shared caresses only by some intolerable longing for kisses not to be wakened on cold lips, sterile and dry as dead leaves.
There was an undoubted affinity in his mind between the two great passions of his life: revolution and good brew. The taste of one immediately brought to mind the other.
Institutionalised love always looks down on her more liberal sister.
True love in my view can only flourish in conditions where there is a mixture of freedom and constraint. An imposed love, sanctioned by law and blessed by a priest does not really seem the same thing at all.