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But there is reason to suspect that a people are waning to decay and ruin, the moment that their life becomes fascinating either to the poet's imagination or the painter's eye.
Chapter XXXII: "Scenes By the Way"
One of two or three passages in this book that might be called 'funny.'
I won't give you all of the details, but I will tell you that the Candide & his fellow traveler are found sleeping on the ground by 'Oreillons'. The Oreillons have Candide, who is wearing a Jesuit hat, and his fellow traveler tied up, as they all begin to cry out, one and all, "A Jesuit! a Jesuit! we shall be revenged; we shall have excellent cheer; let us eat this Jesuit; let us eat him up." Needless to say it put a big smile on my face.
Sure enough, below the big embankment, along the river, in a little street of old houses, youths were standing outside or sitting in doorways, chatting with one another across the road and asking about the battle. Until the bullets hit them in the head, they couldn't help being curious, even excited, by it all.
I think an even more memorable part of Candide would have to be "I was in this state of weakness and languor, between life and death, when I felt myself touched by something which moved over my body. Opening my eyes, I saw a white man, rather attractive, who was groaning and saying under his breath: O che sciagura d'essere senza coglioni (Oh what a misfortune to have no testicles!)Quote:
I won't give you all of the details, but I will tell you that the Candide & his fellow traveler are found sleeping on the ground by 'Oreillons'. The Oreillons have Candide, who is wearing a Jesuit hat, and his fellow traveler tied up, as they all begin to cry out, one and all, "A Jesuit! a Jesuit! we shall be revenged; we shall have excellent cheer; let us eat this Jesuit; let us eat him up." Needless to say it put a big smile on my face.
-George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant, from a collection of his essays.Quote:
I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.
In the essay he describes a time that he shot an elephant, which he did not really want to shoot, in colonial Burma. He only shot it because that is what the "natives" expected him to do after the elephant killed an Indian resident. He would look like a fool if he grabbed his rifle, headed down to the paddy where the elephant was, and then left without having killed it.
Earlier in the essay he mentions that the worst thing that could happen to a white man in the Asian colonies was being laughed at by the local population. When he is contemplating what would happen if the elephant charged him, he says he is not scared of the thought of dying, just the thought of how his dying would reflect on the Empire:
Quote:
The sole thought in my mind was that if anything went wrong, those two thousannd Burmans would see me pursued, caught, trampled on and reduced to a grinning corpse like that Indian up the hill. And if that happened it was quite probable that some of them would laugh. That would never do.
Won't you let me try to make up a little for all I've failed to do in the past?
(Painted Veil by S. Maugham)
" Start bravely, not to reason but to act.
As soon as you begin to act you will immediately become aware
of the necessity of justifying your actions."
Stanislavski - An Introduction
Letters to a Young Contrarian by Christopher Hitchens
"Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mamnals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plent of time for silence. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you."
- Jane Austen, EmmaQuote:
Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure to be talked of.
'What is an ocean but a multitude of drops?'
(Last line of Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell)
The Blithedale Romance Hawthorne
Chapter XVI: Leave-Takings
Quote:
When a real and strong affection has come to an end, it is not well to mock the sacred past with any show of those common-place civilities that belong to ordinary intercourse. Being dead henceforth to him, and he to me, there could be no propriety in our chilling one another with the touch of two corpse-like hands, or playing at looks of courtsey with eyes that were inpenetrable beneath the glaze and film. We passed, therefore, as if mutuall invisible.
Miss Smith, Persuasion (Austen)Quote:
Here and there, human nature may be great in times of trial, but generally speaking it is its weakness and not its strength that appears in a sick chamber; it is selfishness and impatience rather than generosity and fortitude, that one hears of. There is so little real friendship in the world! - and unfortunately, there are so many who forget to think seriously till it is almost too late.
This is very strong expression.
‘Yet when six o’clock comes and I touch my hat to the commissionaire, being always too effusive in ceremony since I desire so much to be accepted; and struggle, leaning against the wind, buttoned up, with my jaws blue and my eyes running water, I wish that a little typist would cuddle on my knees; I think that my favourite dish is liver and bacon; and so am apt to wander to the river, to the narrow streets where there are frequent public-houses, and the shadows of ships passing at the end of the street, and women fighting. But I say to myself, recovering my sanity, Mr Prentice at four; Mr Eyres at four-thirty. The hatchet must fall on the block; the oak must be cleft to the centre. The weight of the world is on my shoulders. Here is the pen and the paper; on the letters in the wire basket I sign my name, I, I, and again I.’
The Waves , Woolf
"...je suis las de tuer tout tes amants, c'est toi que je tuerai."
"J'ai toujours pensait que tu me tuerais. La premiée fois que je t'ai vu, je venais de rencontrer un prétre à la porte de ma maison. Et cette nuit, En sortant de Cordoue, n'as tu rien vu? Un liévre a passé entre les pieds de ton cheval. C'est écrit." Carmen by Prosper Mérimée.
It was said by Carmen to Don José.
a young man named adam, on the run from the law, trying to survive in the desert..."To starve was nothing, but to eat while starving was hell!"