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A Place of Greater Safety

Book by Hilary Mantel · 7 quotes · French Revolution, Humour, Character

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A Place of Greater Safety Quotes

“Talking to Robespierre, one tried to make the right noises; but what is right, these days? Address yourself to the militant, and you find a pacifist giving you a reproachful look. Address yourself to the idealist, and you’ll find that you’ve fallen into the company of a cheerful, breezy professional politician. Address yourself to means, and you’ll be told to think of ends: to ends, and you’ll be told to think of means. Make an assumption, and you will find it overturned; offer yesterday’s conviction, and today you’ll find it shredded. What did Mirabeau complain of? He believes everything he says. Presumably there was some layer of Robespierre, some deep stratum, where all the contradictions were resolved.”

CharacterFrench Revolution
Book:A Place of Greater Safety
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“Fabre stood up. He placed his fingertips on d‘Anton’s temples. “Put your fingers here,” he said. “Feel the resonance. Put them here, and here.” He jabbed at d’Anton’s face: below the cheekbones, at the side of his jaw. “I’ll teach you like an actor,” he said. “This city is our stage.” Camille said: “Book of Ezekiel. ‘This city is the cauldron, and we the flesh’ ...” Fabre turned. “This stutter,” he said. “You don’t have to do it.” Camille put his hands over his eyes. “Leave me alone,” he said. “Even you.” Fabre’s face was incandescent. “Even you, I am going to teach.” He leapt forward, wrenched Camille upright in his chair. He took him by the shoulders and shook him. “You’re going to talk properly,” Fabre said. “Even if it kills one of us.” Camille put his hands protectively over his head. Fabre continued to perpetrate violence; d’Anton was too tired to intervene.”

HumourPublic Speaking
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“He stepped back, looked up. Cut into the stone above his head were the words RUE MARAT. For a moment he had the urge to turn back around the corner, climb the stairs, shout to the servants not to bother unpacking, they’d be returning to Arcis in the morning. He looked up to the lighted windows above his head. If I go up there, he thought, I’ll never be free again. If I go up there I commit myself to Max, to joining with him to finish Hébert, and perhaps to governing with him. I commit myself to fishing Fabre out of trouble—though God alone knows how that’s to be managed. I put myself once more under the threat of assassination; I recommence the blood feuds, the denunciations. His face hardened. You can’t stand in the street calling into question the last five years of your life, just because they’ve changed the street name; you can’t let it alter the future. No, he thought—and he saw it clearly, for the first time—it’s an illusion, about quitting, about going back to Arcis to farm. I’ve been lying to Louise: once in, never out.”

French RevolutionPoliticsics
Book:A Place of Greater Safety
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“Your fear is, that if you marry Adèle, you will love her. If you have children, you will love them more than anything else in the world, more than patriotism, more than democracy. If your children grow up, and prove traitors to the people, will you be able to demand their deaths, as the Romans did? Perhaps you will, but perhaps you will not be able to do it. You’re afraid that if you love people you may be deflected from your duty, but it’s because of another kind of love, isn’t it, that the duty is laid upon you?”

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