Robin Buss is a writer and translator who contributes regularly to The Times Educational Supplement, The Times Literary Supplement and other papers.
He leaned over the dying man and whispered in his ear, ‘I am – ’ And his lips uttered a name so softly that he himself seemed to be afraid to hear it.
Paid the last debt of nature.
Los hombres generosos son siempre compasivos, cuando la desgracia de su adversario es mayor que su odio.
You live alone, then?” “I do.” “You have no sister, no son, no father?” “I have no one.” “How can you live thus, with no one to attach you to life?
I have descended from a planet called grief.
Ideas never die, Sire, and, though they may slumber for a time, they wake up stronger than when they fell asleep.
When one thinks,” said Caderousse, letting his hand drop on the paper, “there is here wherewithal to kill a man more sure than if we waited at the corner of a wood to assassinate him! I have always had more dread of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper, than of a sword or pistol.
Oh, what is man!’ d’Avrigny muttered. ‘The most egoistical of all animals, the most personal of all creatures, who cannot believe otherwise than that the earth revolves, the sun shines and death reaps for him alone – an ant, cursing God from the summit of a blade of grass!
Rochelle vertrieben.
The dominions of kings are limited either by mountains or rivers, or a change of manners, or an alteration of language.
Das Kloster der Karmeliterinnen zu Bethune.
Did you not hear what I said, sir? I told you there was fire in my sentence. And though it is only after death that my body is to be burnt, it will always be a terrible disgrace on my memory. I am saved the pain of being burnt alive, and thus, perhaps, saved from a death of despair, but the shamefulness is the same, and it is that I think of.
Happiness or unhappiness is the secret known but to one’s self and the walls – walls have ears but no tongue;.
Obsequies, madame, are for those who survive, not for the dead.
What melancholy thought,′ said the King, ’can possibly reach your heart when I place mine as a rampart before it?
This woman only became a criminal because she touched me. I am oozing with crime. She caught it off me as one may catch typhus, or cholera, or the plague!
Oh, man,” murmured d’Avrigny, “the most selfish of all animals, the most personal of all creatures, who believes the earth turns, the sun shines, and death strikes for him alone, – an ant cursing God from the top of a blade of grass!
You will live for me, as I will live for you.
I know that the world is a salon which we ought to leave politely and honestly; that is, after saluting and paying our gambling debts.
The Imperial throne was occupied by Frederic III, who had been rightly named the Peaceful, not for the reason that he had always maintained peace, but because, having constantly been beaten, he had always been forced to make it.