Le Colonel Chabert Quotes

“Misfortune is a kind of talisman whose virtue consists in its power to confirm our original nature; in some men it increases their distrust and malignancy, just as it improves the goodness of those who have a kind heart.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Le Colonel Chabert

“Mais que peuvent les malheureux? Ils aiment, voilà tout.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Le Colonel Chabert

“Do you know, my dear fellow,” Derville went on after a pause, “there are in modern society three men who can never think well of the world—the priest, the doctor, and the man of law? And they wear black robes, perhaps because they are in mourning for every virtue and every illusion. The most hapless of the three is the lawyer. When a man comes in search of the priest, he is prompted by repentance, by remorse, by beliefs which make him interesting, which elevate him and comfort the soul of the intercessor whose task will bring him a sort of gladness; he purifies, repairs and reconciles. But we lawyers, we see the same evil feelings repeated again and again, nothing can correct them; our offices are sewers which can never be cleansed.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Le Colonel Chabert

“Truth is less complete in its utterance; it does not put everything on the outside; it allows us to see what is within.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Le Colonel Chabert

“J’ai été enterré sous les morts ; mais, maintenant, je suis enterré sous des vivants, sous des actes, sous des faits, sous la société tout entière, qui veut me faire rentrer sous terre!”
― Honoré de Balzac, Le Colonel Chabert

“Physical pain pales beside moral suffering, but arouses more pity since it can be seen.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Le Colonel Chabert

“an old mother with whom he shares the thirty or forty francs allocated to him per month. “If he’s a man, why do you call him ‘old greatcoat’?” said Simonnin, with the expression of a schoolboy catching his teacher out. And he went back to eating his bread and cheese, leaning his shoulder against the stile of the window, since he took his rest standing up, like the cab-horses of Paris, with one of his legs bent and propped on his other shoe’s toe. “Think of the fun we could have with that old codger!” muttered the third clerk, Godeschal by name, as he paused in the middle of a line of argument he was developing in a petition to be copied out in a fair hand by the fourth clerk, the draft copies of which were”
― Honoré de Balzac, Colonel Chabert

“acabo de ouvir uma história que me custará talvez vinte e cinco luíses. Se for roubado, não lamentarei o dinheiro, porque vi o mais talentoso comediante da nossa época”
― Honoré de Balzac, Le Colonel Chabert

“Enfim, todos os horrores que os romancistas pensam que inventam estão sempre aquém da verdade”
― Honoré de Balzac, Le Colonel Chabert

“Morālās ciešanas, kas pārspēj fiziskās, allaž izraisa mazāku žēlumu, jo cilvēka acij nav saskatāmas.”
― Onorē de Balzaks, Le Colonel Chabert

“Le malheur est une espèce de talisman
dont la vertu consiste à corroborer notre
constitution primitive : il augmente la défiance et la méchanceté chez certains hommes, comme il accroît la bonté de ceux qui ont un cœur
excellent.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Le Colonel Chabert

“Certes, si les sacristies humides où les prières se pèsent et se
payent comme des épices, si les magasins des revendeuses où flottent des guenilles qui flétrissent toutes les illusions de la vie en nous montrant où aboutissent nos fêtes, si ces deux cloaques de la poésie n’existaient pas, une étude d’avoué serait de toutes les boutiques sociales la plus horrible. Mais il en est ainsi de la maison de jeu, du tribunal, du bureau de loterie et du mauvais lieu. Pourquoi? Peut-être dans ces endroits le drame, en se jouant dans l’âme de l’homme, lui rend-il les accessoires indifférents, ce qui expliquerait aussi la simplicité du grand penseur et des grands ambitieux.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Le Colonel Chabert