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He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.
“Evidently not. They are just governing classes, and I never heard of governing classes that had eyes for anything but their own profit.”
the future is to be read with certainty only in the past. Ab actu ad posse valet consecutio. Man never changes. He is always greedy, always acquisitive, always vile. I am speaking of Man in the bulk.”
It is the nobles and clergy who sit in the high places, with the people of France harnessed under their feet, who are the real rulers. That is why I say that France is a republic; she is a republic built on the best pattern—the Roman pattern. Then, as now, there were great patrician families in luxury, preserving for themselves power and wealth, and what else is accounted worth possessing; and there was the populace crushed and groaning, sweating, bleeding, starving, and perishing in the Roman kennels. That was a republic; the mightiest we have seen.”
Has it ever occurred to you, Philippe, what it is that makes the rule of the nobles so intolerable? Acquisitiveness. Acquisitiveness is the curse of mankind. And shall you expect less acquisitiveness in men who have built themselves up by acquisitiveness?
“The tenure of power is power. We cannot dictate to those who hold it.”
Naturally the nobles will not yield without a struggle. It is a futile and ridiculous struggle—but then… it is human nature, I suppose, to be futile and ridiculous.”
I have never set much store by books, Andre; and I have never known anything but trouble to come out of learning. It unsettles a man. It complicates his views of life, destroys the simplicity which makes for peace of mind and happiness.
“The gentleman,” said Andre-Louis, “is the devil; or rather, I should prefer to say upon reflection, that the devil is a gentleman by comparison.”
She appeared to be instructed in all the things of which a girl is better ignorant, and ignorant of all the things that a girl should know.
I desire a society which selects its rulers from the best elements of every class and denies the right of any class or corporation to usurp the government to itself—whether it be the nobles, the clergy, the bourgeoisie, or the proletariat. For government by any one class is fatal to the welfare of the whole.
