Home > Work > The Queen's Necklace

The Queen's Necklace QUOTES

The Queen's Necklace QUOTES

1 " The French by their nature had a permanent hunger for sensation. This was even more true of the eighteenth century, of which that considerable expert Victor du Bled remarked that no other age was ever so bored. "

― Antal Szerb , The Queen's Necklace

2 " It is not the business of a Queen to be human. "

― Antal Szerb , The Queen's Necklace

3 " If you spent time thinking about the future, you wouldn't be a true adventurer. An adventure is something that happens from one moment to the next; in which there is no yesterday and no tomorrow. Everything else is just petty bourgeois. "

― Antal Szerb , The Queen's Necklace

4 " [The eighteenth century] was the century, as we are frequently told, of women - the intellectual life of women in salons, women wielding unseen influence, women as members of academies, theatrical productions whose success depended on the power of actresses to charm; in the economic sphere, financiers amassing great fortunes in order to marry their daughters into the aristocracy, and women ruling over whole peoples and empires: Maria Theresa, Catherine the Great, Queen Elisabeth Farnese of Spain, as well as the likes of Mme du Pompadour and Mme du Barry. It was as if some residual matriarchy - the oldest culture of the Mediterranean - was struggling to emerge from the blood and the collective unconscious; as if the time would one day return when, in every tribe, it was the women who possessed wealth and power and the men who 'married out', moving into the wife's extended family, where they became gentle, pampered, more or less superfluous drones. [...] In the century of women, it was inevitable that these erotic legends should attach themselves to the outstanding female figures of the time [...] and all this applied even more strongly in France. It was there that women reached the greatest positions of power, and there that this erotic momentum was at its strongest, by virtue of the traditions and nature of the French people. "

― Antal Szerb , The Queen's Necklace

5 " If an aristocrat became bankrupt he looked to the sunshine of royal providence [...] but when the nobility sank too low to qualify for royal notice, they became fraudsters, trading on the display of rank: the man would become a card-sharper or gigolo, while the woman sold herself. Actual work would have been unthinkable. It would have offended against the ancient order of things, which assigned that role to the middle classes and the peasantry. This concept is difficult to connect with our modern view of the world, but its very absurdity follows directly from the fact that everything in its old order was so firm and wonderful - with everything in its eternally appointed place and moving in fixed circles like the stars. There was no changing your lot in life at will: it was assigned to you forever, by birth. If you fell below your appointed station, you couldn't just swap it for another - you simply plummeted into the void. "

― Antal Szerb , The Queen's Necklace

6 " Sajátságos módon ennek a családnak nem volt egyetlenegy tagja sem, aki mint államférfi, hadvezér vagy más téren nagy ember megokolta volna a család hatalmas önérzetét. A Rohanok ebben is olyanok voltak, mint ahogy az ember az Ancien Regime nagyurait elképzeli: sosem tettek semmi mást, csak származtak; nem röstellték a fáradságot megszületni, mint Figaro mondja. "

― Antal Szerb , The Queen's Necklace