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Quote by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

Work

Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Written by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, this novel is a series of letters that depict the intricate web of affairs and manipulations among the aristocracy of 18th-century France. more

Author

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (October 18, 1741 – September 5, 1803) was a French novelist and army officer, best known for his epistolary novel 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses' (Dangerous Liaisons). Born into a noble family, he served in the French military, participating in the American Revolutionary War. His novel, a critique of aristocratic morality and manipulation, became a classic of 18th-century literature. Laclos later engaged in politics during the French Revolution, supporting republican ideals, and died in Italy under Napoleon's rule. more

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“He turned over towards the light and lay gazing into the glass paperweight. The inexhaustibly interesting thing was not the fragment of coral but the interior of the glass itself. There was such a depth of it, and yet it was almost as transparent as air. It was as though the surface of the glass had been the arch of the sky, enclosing a tiny world with its atmosphere complete. He had the feeling that he could get inside it, and that in fact he was inside it, along with the mahogany bed and the gateleg table, and the clock and the steel engraving and the paperweight itself. The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia's life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal.”

“Well…I only made a lumpy paperweight so far.” “I still have my very first paperweight.” “You do?” “I had to stand on a box to reach in with the punty rod. But I did everything myself. It resembled a squashed apple, but my parents were so proud of my creation I thought it was the best paperweight in the world.” “I guess I’ll keep mine.” “It’ll be a good gauge of how much you improve. When you become frustrated when a piece cracks or turns out wrong, you can look back at that paperweight and see just how far you’ve come.”

“As I’ve said, it wasn’t until a long time afterwards—long after I’d left the Cottages—that I realized just how significant out little encounter in the churchyard had been. I was upset at the time, yes. But I didn’t believe it to be anything so different from other tiffs we’d had. It never occurred to me that our lives, until then so closely interwoven could unravel and separate over a thing like that. But the fact was, I suppose, there were powerful tides tugging us apart by then, and it only needed something like that to finish the task. If we’d understood that back then—who knows?—maybe we’d have kept a tighter hold of one another.”