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Gabriel Chevallier QUOTES

Gabriel Chevallier QUOTES

1 " Frail to the point of invalidism, without family and with nothing to look forward to, she [Mlle Muguette] yet contrived to be happy. How strange a thing is happiness! Mlle Pimpalet, the notary's wife, arrogantly middle-class, well-furnished with the goods of this world, cared for and waited on, yet invariably looked as if she had been given rat poison for breakfast. While Muguette with nothing, almost on the parish, was radiant with carefree joyousness. Her courage almost made people want to kiss her. "

― Gabriel Chevallier ,

2 " He was regarded merely as an eccentric employee of indifferent merit, and his post of deputy chief clerk was the highest he would ever reach. Well aware of this, he made it a rule never to show any zeal, except in special circumstances. It is true that in these cases his zeal was clothed with a spirit of vengeance directed against the whole human race—this being his second favourite occupation. Petitbidois would have liked to hold the reins of power. This being beyond his sphere, he utilized the small driblets of authority which came his way for the purpose of casting ridicule upon established law and order, by making it act as a sort of unintelligent and, if possible, malicious Providence. 'The world is an idiot place anyway,' he would say, 'so why worry? Life is just a lottery. Let us leave the decision to chance. "

― Gabriel Chevallier , Clochemerle

3 " There is something relentless about the serenity of nature which has a crushing effect on the human mind. The lavish splendour of her phases, which completely ignores human strife, fills the race of men with the sensation of their own ephemeral insignificance and drives them mad. "

― Gabriel Chevallier , Clochemerle

4 " At Clochemerle, the greater number of the men put up with their wives, and the great majority of the women with their husbands. If this hardly amounted to adoration, in the majority of homes at any rate the men and women found each other very nearly endurable. "

― Gabriel Chevallier , Clochemerle

5 " Men were snoring, twitching and whimpering, struggling with nightmares less terrible than reality. "

― Gabriel Chevallier , Fear: A Novel of World War I

6 " I carry my liberty with me. It is in my thoughts, in my head. Shakespeare is one of my countries, Goethe another. You can change that badge that I wear, but you can’t change the way I think. It is through my intellect that I can escape the roles, intrusions, and obligations with which every civilisation, every community would burden me. I make myself my own homeland through my affinities, my choices, my ideas, and no one can take it away from me – I may even be able to enlarge it. I don’t spend my life in the company of crowds but individuals. If I could pick fifty individuals from each nation, then perhaps I could put together a society I’d be happy with. My first possession is myself; better to sent it into exile than to lose it, to change a few habits rather than terminate my role as a human being. We only have one homeland: the world. "

― Gabriel Chevallier , Fear: A Novel of World War I

7 " Victorious troops are those who kill more, and here we were the victims. This put the finishing touch to our demoralisation. The soldiers had lost conviction long ago. Now they lost confidence. "

― Gabriel Chevallier , Fear: A Novel of World War I

8 " Alas, God's poor ministers are just as much in the dark as we are. You must believe like old women believe, the ones that look like witches, who mumble to themselves in churches under the nose of cheap, plaster saints. As soon as you start to use your reason, to look for a rainbow, you always run up against the great excuse, mystery. You will be advised to light some candles, put coins in the box, say a few rosaries, and make yourself stupid. "

― Gabriel Chevallier , Fear: A Novel of World War I

9 " Once again was it proved that the designs of Providence are impenetrable and that the sinner, climbing out of the pit of his filthiness, may feel himself touched by grace. "

― Gabriel Chevallier ,

10 " Men are stupid and ignorant. That is why they suffer. Instead of thinking, they believe all that they are told, all that they are taught. They choose their lords and masters without judging them, with a fatal taste for slavery. "

― Gabriel Chevallier , Fear: A Novel of World War I

11 " During several centuries Clochemerle, far from the cities and trade routes, had lived in stillness and isolation. But now, at last, the clamour of the great world was crossing the invisible barrier, bringing doubts, temptations, and discontents. "

― Gabriel Chevallier ,

12 " For the wine of Clochemerle is at once exquisite and treacherous; it charms first the nose, then the palate, finally the entire man. Mark well that if it makes a man drunk it does not do so malignantly. It produces an enchanting light-heartedness, an intellectual sparkle which liberates the drinker from the constraints and conventions which bind him in his daily life. "

― Gabriel Chevallier ,

13 " The Clochemerle 1929 was a magnificent wine. Drinking it in small sips, his grace the Archbishop felt himself well disposed towards the Clochemerlins. It takes all sorts to make a world and a Church, to people Heaven and Hell. But there was no denying that it took capable vignerons to make a wine like this, men whose minds must on no account be distracted by excessive metaphysical cares. "

― Gabriel Chevallier ,

14 " The Curé Noive had a sister who acted as his housekeeper, a lady with a moustache, whose piety was astringent, and who fostered a splenetic God in a heart which was outraged at anything gracious, tender, or lovable that life might offer. There are such cross-grained natures, made spiteful and furious by anything that looks like happiness. "

― Gabriel Chevallier ,

15 " She was one of those women who are usually referred to in the past tense, of whom one says: 'She had a certain freshness and bloom about her,' and whose freshness and bloom passed unnoticed even when she still had them. "

― Gabriel Chevallier , Clochemerle

16 " ...the schoolmaster was one of those men for whom virtuous indignation was a necessity. "

― Gabriel Chevallier , Clochemerle

17 " It was true that the elders found everything changing all about them with a precipitation which was leaving them stripped of authority. The girls (kids they remembered no bigger than that) suddenly flowered and married. The lads returned from their military service with blasé airs and a new vocabulary. A horde of new brats was born, making their disprespectful uproar in Clochemerle. "

― Gabriel Chevallier ,

18 " The Church should adapt itself to the manners of the time, since it seems only too clear that the manners of the time adapt themselves less and less to the Church. "

― Gabriel Chevallier ,

19 " The law, as manipulated by clever and highly respected rascals, still remains the best avenue for a career of honourable and leisurely plunder. "

― Gabriel Chevallier , Clochemerle

20 " Some of his colleagues, as he was well aware, even went so far as to say he dishonoured the medical profession. As though it could be dishonoured! There is pain and sickness, agreed. But pain and sickness represent money, and you need money to live, to feel well and look after others. That is the inevitable cycle. When it comes to money, it is difficult to strike a happy mean and stick to it. You either make too much money, or too little. It is safer to make too much. "

― Gabriel Chevallier ,