Joan of Arc Quotes

“The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which the outside didn't indicate or promise, and which the other kind of eye couldn't detect.”
― Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

“To believe yourself brave is to be brave; it is the one only essential thing.”
― Mark Twain, Joan of Arc

“Ah, that shows you the power of music, that magician of magician, who lifts his wand and says his mysterious word and all things real pass away and the phantoms of your mind walk before you clothed in flesh.”
― Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

“I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well.”
― Mark Twain, Joan of Arc

“The boys were amazed that I could make such a poem as that out of my own head, and so was I, of course, it being as much a surprise to me as it could be to anybody, for I did not know that it was in me. If any had asked me a single day before if it was in me, I should have told them frankly no, it was not.
That is the way with us; we may go on half of our life not knowing such a thing is in us, when in reality it was there all the time, and all we needed was something to turn up that would call for it.”
― Mark Twain, Joan of Arc

“When we reflect that her century was the brutalest, the wickedest, the rottenest in history since the darkest ages, we are lost in wonder at the miracle of such a product from such a soil. The contrast between her and her century is the contrast between day and night. She was truthful when lying was the common speech of men; she was honest when honesty was become a lost virtue; she was a keeper of promises when the keeping of a promise was expected of no one; she gave her great mind to great thoughts and great purposes when other great minds wasted themselves upon pretty fancies or upon poor ambitions; she was modest, and fine, and delicate when to be loud and coarse might be said to be universal; she was full of pity when a merciless cruelty was the rule; she was steadfast when stability was unknown, and honorable in an age which had forgotten what honor was; she was a rock of convictions in a time when men believed in nothing and scoffed at all things; she was unfailingly true to an age that was false to the core; she maintained her personal dignity unimpaired in an age of fawnings and servilities; she was of a dauntless courage when hope and courage had perished in the hearts of her nation; she was spotlessly pure in mind and body when society in the highest places was foul in both—she was all these things in an age when crime was the common business of lords and princes, and when the highest personages in Christendom were able to astonish even that infamous era and make it stand aghast at the spectacle of their atrocious lives black with unimaginable treacheries, butcheries, and beastialities.”
― Mark Twain, Joan of Arc

“Consider this unique and imposing distinction. Since the writing of human history began, Joan of Arc is the only person, of either sex, who has ever held supreme command of the military forces of a nation at the age of seventeen.”
― Louis Kossuth, Joan of Arc

“We are so strangely made; the memories that could make us happy pass away; it is the memories that break our hearts that abide.”
― Mark Twain, Joan of Arc

“It had borne the burden, it had earned the honor”—”
― Mark Twain, Joan of Arc

“Work! work! and God will work with us!”
― Mark Twain, Joan of Arc

“Always—from all companies, high or low—she went forth richer in honor and esteem than when she came.”
― Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Vol I

“Now what has kept your leaves so green,
Arbre Fée de Bourlemont?
The children's tears! They brought each grief,
And you did comfort them and cheer
Their bruisèd hearts, and steal a tear
That, healèd, rose a leaf.

And what has built you up so strong,
Arbre Fée de Bourlemont?
The children's love! They've loved you long
Ten hundred years, in sooth,
They've nourished you with praise and song,
And warmed your heart and kept it young—
A thousand years of youth!

Bide always green in our young hearts,
Arbre Fée de Bourlemont!
And we shall always youthful be,
Not heeding Time his flight;
And when, in exile wand'ring, we
Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee,
O, rise upon our sight!”
― Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

“If I be not in a state of Grace, I pray God place me in it; if I be in it, I pray God keep me so.”
― Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

“There was a secret somewhere, but madness was not the key to it.”
― Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

“The startled girl dropped her watering-pot and clasped her hands together, and at that moment a stone cannon-ball crashed through her fair body.”
― Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Vol I

“None are so ready to find fault with others as those who do things worthy of blame themselves.”
― Mark Twain, Joan of Arc

“What can a person's heart be made of that can pity a Christian's child and yet can't pity a devil's child, that a thousand times more needs it!”
― Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

“The governor had made up his mind to one thing: Joan was either a witch or a saint, and he meant to find out which it was.”
― Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, Volumes 1 & 2

“He worked up his old battles and tricked them out with fresh splendors; also with new terrors, for he added artillery now.”
― Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

“At first when the Paladin heard us tell about the glories of the Royal Audience he was broken-hearted because he was not taken with us to it; next, his talk was full of what he would have done if he had been there; and within two days he was telling what he did do when he was there.”
― Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

“One day, riding along, we were talking about Joan's great talents, and he said, 'But, greatest of all her gifts, she has the seeing eye.' I said, like an unthinking fool, 'The seeing eye?—I shouldn't count on that for much—I suppose we all have it.' 'No,' he said; 'very few have it.' Then he explained, and made his meaning clear. He said the common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which the outside didn't indicate or promise, and which the other kind of eye couldn't detect.”
― Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Vol I

“Not a reproach passed her lips. She was too great for that - she was Joan of Arc; and when that is said, all is said.”
― Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

“She was troubled, and said that these honors were not meet for one of her lowly birth and station, and by their kind grace she would remain simple Joan of Arc, nothing more -- and so be called.

Nothing more! As if there could be anything more, anything higher, anything greater. My Lady Du Lis -- why, it was tinsel, petty, perishable. But, JOAN OF ARC! The mere sound of it sets one's pulses leaping.”
― Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

“Yes, she was a poem, she was a dream, she was a spirit...”
― Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

“She was reserved, and kept things to herself, as the truly great always do.”
― Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

“When God fights, it's of small consequence whether the hand that holds the sword is big or little”
― Mark Twain, Joan of Arc

“Joan of Arc, the savior of France was sold; sold to her enemies; to the enemies of her country; enemies who had lashed and thrashed and thumped and trounced France for a century and made holiday sport of it; enemies who had forgotten, years and years ago, what a Frenchman's face was like, so used were they to seeing nothing but his back; enemies whom she had whipped, whom she had cowed, whom she had taught to respect French valour, new-born in her nation by the breath of her spirit; enemies who hungered for her life as being the only puissance able to stand between English triumph and French degradation.
Sold to a French priest by a French prince, with the French King and the French nation standing thankless by and saying nothing.”
― Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

“Whatever thing men call great, look for it in Joan of Arc, and there you will find it.”
― Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

“Yes, both of those old people thought that that tale was pathetic; whereas to my mind it was purely ridiculous, and not in any way valuable to any one. It seemed so to me then, and it seems so to me yet. And as for history, it does not resemble history; for the office of history is to furnish serious and important facts that teach; whereas this strange and useless event teaches nothing; nothing that I can see, except not to ride a bull to a funeral; and surely no reflecting person needs to be taught that.”
― Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

“that shows you the power of music, that magician of magicians ; who lifts his wand and says his mysterious word and all things real pass away and the phantoms of your mind walk before you clothed in flesh.”
― Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc