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" They were the only members of their family, and they were both humble, crushed, and thrust aside by life; they were united in sadness and tenderness by a bond of mutual pity and common suffering, borne in secret. With the Kraffts—robust, noisy, brutal, solidly built for living, and living joyously—these two weak, kindly creatures, out of their setting, so to speak, outside life, understood and pitied each other without ever saying anything about it. "
― Romain Rolland , Jean-Christophe by Romain Rolland (The Complete 10-Volume Novel), Translated by Gilbert Cannan with an Introduction by Nicholas Tamblyn (Illustrated)
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" But, uncle, isn’t it possible to make other songs, new songs?” “Why make them? There are enough for everything. There are songs for when you are sad, and for when you are gay; for when you are weary, and for when you are thinking of home; for when you despise yourself, because you have been a vile sinner, a worm upon the earth; for when you want to weep, because people have not been kind to you; and for when your heart is glad because the world is beautiful, and you see God’s heaven, which, like Him, is always kind, and seems to laugh at you…. There are songs for everything, everything. Why should I make them? "
― Romain Rolland , Jean-Christophe by Romain Rolland (The Complete 10-Volume Novel), Translated by Gilbert Cannan with an Introduction by Nicholas Tamblyn (Illustrated)
