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Quote by Honoré de Balzac

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Eugenie Grandet

Eugenie Grandet is a classic French novel that delves into the life of the title character, Eugenie, and her interactions with her wealthy and controlling family. The story is set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic era and examines the consequences of materialism and the struggle for personal freedom amidst a rigid social hierarchy. more

Author

Honoré de Balzac

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Honoré de Balzac. more

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“What we think of as acts of cruelty are in reality nothing of the kind. Someone from the Middle Ages would still find the whole style of our present-day life abhorrent, but cruel, horrifying and barbaric in a quite different way. Every age, every culture, every ethos and tradition has a style of its own, has the varieties of gentleness and harshness, of beauty and cruelty that are appropriate to it. Each age will take certain kinds of suffering for granted, will patiently accept certain wrongs. Human life becomes a real hell of suffering only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap. Required to live in the Middle Ages, someone from the Graeco-Roman period would have died a wretched death by suffocation, just as a savage inevitably would in the midst our civilisation. Now, there are times when a whole generation gets caught to such an extent between two eras, two styles of life, that nothing comes naturally to it since it has lost all sense of morality, security and innocence. A man of Nietzsche's mettle had to endure our present misery more than a generation in advance. Today, thousands are enduring what he had to suffer alone and without being understood.”

“Mother Teresa with almost pragmatic efficiency had brought together two perceived needs: the need for a kind of power house of prayer o the part of her Missionaries of Charity; and the need of the sick and suffering to find a meaning to their existence. Over and above this, however, many of the Sick and Suffering links became living witnesses to Mother Teresa's conviction that suffering could draw people closer to God. The letters of the Sick and Suffering bore such eloquent witness to her belief that 'suffering begets life in the soul' that in 1983 Mother Teresa would take the unusual step of actually suggesting that they should be published. The reason she gave was less uncharacteristic: 'It will help many people to love Jesus more.;”

“Parvatibai had heard that the gods visit trials and travails upon mankind to test them. Test what? Their faith, their loyalty, their fortitude, their capacity for suffering? She thought that this was what rotten parents did: they did not know how to handle their impotence and rage against their partners, fate or the world and so beat their children and said it was for their own good. She had no idea what good ensued from piling hardship upon hardship, evil and torture. If watching people lose heart, break down and squirm, gave the gods pleasure, then they were stranger than men and women.”

“Grief is a natural process. You grieve when you give attention to someone's absence from your Life. But there's another way to deal with such irreparable loss. Try celebrating that person's Life – what did they stand for, what did you learn from them, who did they love, what would they have loved for you to do?...And go celebrate all these qualities of them/in them by living your Life fully, in celebration....When you transform your grief into celebration, you come alive. You will feel the pain (of separation) but you will not suffer. And when you are not suffering, you are flowing with Life...then you are not missing the absence of someone, you are feeling their essence; their presence is felt through the essence of who they were/what they were!”