Clochemerle-les-Bains [English language] A source page for quotes linked to Gabriel Chevallier. 0 quotes
“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.” WarConfidenceVictoryWwi Book:Fear Source: Fear
“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.” NatureMadness Book:Clochemerle Source: Clochemerle
“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.” ChurchMannersChanging TimesClochemerle Book:Clochemerle-les-Bains [English language] Source: Clochemerle-les-Bains [English language]
“...a new force given to individual initiatives, a need to smash things up, to leap over fences, to break laws – all this, at the start, made the war acceptable. It was confused with freedom, and discipline was then accepted in the belief that it was lacking.” WarMilitary Life Book:Fear Source: Fear
“If sharing meant receiving, well and good, but if it was a question of giving, then to hell with it, the Clochemerlins would cry out in chorus. Sad to relate, these bumpkins knew nothing about Hegel or Marx. They each had their little patch of ground inherited from previous generations, their trade secrets handed down from father to son, and they could see no farther.” SharingHegelMarxClochemerle Book:Clochemerle-les-Bains [English language] Source: Clochemerle-les-Bains [English language]
“If you want a woman to be sprightly in bed, you must leave her a margin of fun.” SexWomen Book:Clochemerle-les-Bains [English language] Source: Clochemerle-les-Bains [English language]
“In a small community sex constitutes the most accessible and least extravagant pastime of all, rustic love being rarely mercenary.” SexClochemerleSmall Village Book:Clochemerle-les-Bains [English language] Source: Clochemerle-les-Bains [English language]
“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.” Changing Times Book:Clochemerle-Babylon Source: Clochemerle-Babylon
“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.” MarriageHusbands And Wives Book:Clochemerle Source: Clochemerle
“The desire for carnal possession quickly cools, whereas the desire to own land never quits the heart of man.” Land Ownership Book:Clochemerle-Babylon Source: Clochemerle-Babylon
“It is something of a tragedy for young girls of good family that they cannot carry on a love-affair in a simple, straightforward way, in secret, below their station if need be, as do their sisters of humbler origin, who can place their affections wherever they wish without risk of misdirecting a family fortune or making a 'bad match'.” LoveYoung GirlsLove Affairs Book:Clochemerle Source: Clochemerle
“What saves doctors' reputations is the fact that many illnesses are benign and that people can go on living with a large number of others, the so-called chronic ones, which destroy only slowly.” DoctorsIllnessesReputationsClochemerle Book:Clochemerle-les-Bains [English language] Source: Clochemerle-les-Bains [English language]
“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.” FreshnessFading Beauty Book:Clochemerle Source: Clochemerle
“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.” PietySpiteful Book:Clochemerle-Babylon Source: Clochemerle-Babylon
“Enter Justine Putet, of whom it is now time to speak. Imagine a swarthy-looking, ill-tempered person, dried-up and of viperish disposition, with a bad complexion, an evil expression, a cruel tongue, defective internal economy, and (over all this) a layer of aggressive piety and loathsome suavity of speech. A paragon of virtue of a kind that filled you with dismay, for virtue in such a guise as this is detestable to behold, and in this instance it seemed to be inspired by a spirit of hatred and vengeance rather than by ordinary feelings of kindness. An energetic user of rosaries, a fervent petitioner at her prayers, but also an unbridled sower of calumny and clandestine panic. In a word, she was the scorpion of Clochemerle, but a scorpion disguised as a woman of genuine piety.” RosaryAggressive Piety Book:Clochemerle Source: Clochemerle
“If there was one last place in which it was possible to escape the riff-raff of humanity, it was Heaven.” HumanityHeavenRiff Raff Book:Clochemerle-les-Bains [English language] Source: Clochemerle-les-Bains [English language]