Short Fiction quotes

But what a host of thoughts, some agreeable, some sad, throng my brain at once—strange minglings of terrible and delicious pictures!

A bed sees us born, and sees us die. It is the ever changing scene upon which the human race play by turns interesting dramas, laughable farces, and fearful tragedies. It is a cradle decked with flowers. A throne of love. A sepulchre.

This chapter is for metaphysicians, and for metaphysicians only. It will throw a great light upon man’s nature. It is the prism with which to analyze and decompose the human faculties, by separating the animal force from the pure rays of intellect.

… while it is perfectly distinct from the soul, is a real individual, enjoying a separate existence, with its own tastes, inclinations, and will, and which only ranks higher than other animals, because it is better educated than they, and is provided with more perfect organs.

Ladies and gentlemen! Be as proud of your intellect as you please, but be very suspicious of the other, especially when you are together.

I have experimented, I know not how oft, upon the union of these two heterogeneous creatures.

And yet what protestations they made, what offers of assistance! Their purse was at my disposal, and they begged me to depend upon their eternal and entire friendship!

Poor Rose, who has made me no promises, renders me the greatest service that can be bestowed upon humanity, for she has always loved her master, and loves him still.

And this is why I do not hesitate to say that she shares with my other friends the affection I feel towards them.

But his memory lives in my heart, and there alone. He is forgotten by those who surrounded him, and who have replaced him. And this makes his loss the more sad to me.

Nature, in like manner indifferent to the fate of individuals, dons her green spring robe, and decks herself in all her beauty near the cemetery where he rests.

The trees cover themselves with foliage, and intertwine their branches; the birds warble under the leafy sprays; the insects hum among the blossoms: everything breathes joy in this abode of death.

The death of an affectionate man who breathes his last surrounded by his afflicted friends, and that of a butterfly killed in a flower’s cup by the chill air of morning, are but two similar epochs in the course of nature.

Man is but a phantom, a shadow, a mere vapor that melts into the air.

But daybreak begins to whiten the sky. The gloomy thoughts that troubled me vanish with the darkness, and hope awakens again in my heart. No!

I even thought of offering a prize to some academy for this discovery, when riper reflection proved to me that such an invention would be useless.

Alas! how rare it is for ugliness to recognize itself and break the mirror!

In vain are looking-glasses multiplied around us which reflect light and truth with geometrical exactness. As soon as the rays reach our vision and paint us as we are, self-love slips its deceitful prism between us and our image, and presents a divinity to us.

In vain are looking-glasses multiplied around us which reflect light and truth with geometrical exactness. As soon as the rays reach our vision and paint us as we are, self-love slips its deceitful prism between us and our image, and presents a divinity to us.

And of all the prisms that have existed since the first that came from the hands of the immortal Newton, none has possessed so powerful a refractive force, or produced such pleasing and lively colors, as the prism of self-love.

Now, seeing that ordinary looking-glasses record the truth in vain, and that they cannot make men see their own imperfections, everyone being satisfied with his face, what would a moral mirror avail? Few people would look at it, and no one would recognize himself.

Now, seeing that ordinary looking-glasses record the truth in vain, and that they cannot make men see their own imperfections, everyone being satisfied with his face, what would a moral mirror avail? Few people would look at it, and no one would recognize himself.

None save philosophers would spend their time in examining themselves⁠—I even have my doubts about the philosophers.

Taking the mirror as we find it, I hope no one will blame me for ranking it above all the pictures of the Italian school.

Meanwhile, Joannetti, who had gathered together what was left of my dinner, his own share, gave it at once to Jem.

Thus it is that in my journey I get lessons of philosophy and humanity from my servant and my dog.

Before proceeding farther, I wish to remove a suspicion which may have crossed the minds of my readers.

if a lady welcome you at a ball, it is not as a lover that you are received, for you are a husband—but as a part of the ball; and you are therefore but a fraction of her new conquest.

You are the decimal of a lover.

Or, it may be, you dance well, and so give éclat to her graces.

Does this surprise you? Do we not every day meet with people who fancy they are ill because they are unshaven, or because someone has thought they have looked poorly, and told them so?

Dress has such influence upon men’s minds that there are valetudinarians who think themselves in better health than usual when they have on a new coat and well-powdered wig.

They deceive the public and themselves by their nicety about dress, until one finds some fine morning they have died in full fig, and their death startles everybody.

… this, if it be the king’s good pleasure to allow one of them to add to his coat a certain trimming, he straightway believes himself to be a general, and the whole army gives him the title without any notion of making fun of him!

So great an influence has a coat upon the human imagination!

The following illustration will show still further the truth of my assertion.

This day, certain persons on whom I am dependent affect to restore me to liberty.

As if they had ever deprived me of it! As if it were in their power to snatch it from me for a single moment, and to hinder me from traversing, at my own good pleasure, the vast space that ever lies open before me!

They have forbidden me to go at large in a city, a mere speck, and have left open to me the whole universe, in which immensity and eternity obey me.

O why did they not allow me to finish my captivity! Was it as a punishment that I was exiled to my chamber, to that delightful country in which abound all the riches and enjoyments of the world?

As well might they consign a mouse to a granary.

Still, never did I more clearly perceive that I am double than I do now. Whilst I regret my imaginary joys, I feel myself consoled.

Once more I don my customary garb; my door opens; I wander under the spacious porticos of the Strada della Po; a thousand agreeable visions float before my eyes. Yes, there is that mansion, that door, that staircase! I thrill with expectation.

In like manner the act of slicing a lemon gives you a foretaste that makes your mouth water.

In that retired abode the hours fled like minutes, and more than once, while there, my meditations caused me to forget the dinner hour.

Oh, sweet solitude! How well I know the charms with which you captivate your lovers!

Alas for him who cannot be alone for a single day without being bored to death, and who would rather talk with fools, if he must, than hold communion with himself!

unconsciously and unintentionally friend offends friend, and even lovers inevitably fall out and quarrel at times. And since all legislators, from Lycurgus down to those of today, in their attempts to bestow happiness on mankind have failed miserably,

I can at least comfort myself greatly with the thought of having made even one dog happy.

Now that I have told the reader the last of the story of Joanetti and Rose, it only remains for me to say a few words more about the soul and the animal.

These two persons, especially the last, will never more play such an interesting part in my journey. A gentle traveller, who has followed in my footsteps, declares that they must be tired.

Alas! it is but too true!

for although my soul shows no perceptible falling off in vivacity, still her relations with the other have changed: the latter has not the same readiness in repartee, she has no longer—how can I explain it?

No, the attentive spectators of Scapin or Jocrisse deign not to raise their eyes; they go doggedly home or elsewhere without dreaming that there is a sky.

How strange! because they can see it often and for nothing they do not care about it. If the firmament were always veiled from us, and if the sight depended on a showman, the first boxes on the roof would be priceless, and the ladies of Turin would scramble for my garret window.

“Oh! if I were a King,” said I, seized with just indignation, “every night I would have a bell sounded, and compel my subjects of every age, sex, and condition, to place themselves at their windows and look at the stars.”

I must, in truth, confess it has not done much for me hitherto. What matter?

I descend the steep decline of life without fear, without aims, laughing and weeping by turns, and often at the same time, or even whistling some old tune to drive away dull care as I journey on.

At other times I pluck a daisy from the hedgerow and pull the petals off one after another, saying, “She loves me a little—very much—passionately—not at all!” The last petal generally is “not at all,”—in truth, Eliza loves me no more.

What think you of this? But stay, after all, these fine fellows would very shortly have died in the ordinary course of nature. Don’t you see the advancing wave, whose crest is already foaming on the shore?

Wait but another moment and you, your enemies, myself, and the daisies will all have vanished!

Then how can we marvel enough at such madness? For my part I have resolved in future not to pull to pieces any more daisies!

In that abyss of the past, moments and ages are of the same duration, and even the future is no less unreal and inconceivable.”

Between these two states of nonexistence I stand in equilibrium, as it were, on the edge of a blade.

In truth, Time seems to me something so inconceivable that I should be inclined to believe that it has no existence at all, and that what we call Time is nought but a fiction which we have invented to punish us.

In that abyss of the past, moments and ages are of the same duration, and even the future is no less unreal and inconceivable.” Between these two states of nonexistence I stand in equilibrium, as it were, on the edge of a blade.

In truth, Time seems to me something so inconceivable that I should be inclined to believe that it has no existence at all, and that what we call Time is nought but a fiction which we have invented to punish us.

I was rejoicing at having found this definition of Time, though obscure as even Time itself, when another clock struck twelve, and this caused me an unpleasant sensation.

Must I die, someday? I die—I, who speak, think, and feel, shall I really die? I have some difficulty in believing it.

Nothing is more natural than that other folks should die; it is our daily experience, they pass away, we are used to it; but to die oneself⁠ ⁠… oneself⁠ ⁠… one can hardly believe that.

And you sir who think that these reflections are nonsense, learn that all the world thinks in this way, and so do you yourself. No one thinks that he must die.

but to die oneself … oneself … one can hardly believe that. And you sir who think that these reflections are nonsense, learn that all the world thinks in this way, and so do you yourself.

No one thinks that he must die. If there were a race of immortal men, the idea of death could not alarm them less than it does us.

There is something in this that I cannot understand. How is it that men, disturbed eternally by hopes and dreams of the future, trouble themselves so little about that which the future presents to them with absolute certainty?

The quietness and retirement of this spot are wonderful. We are in a town, and yet might fancy ourselves in a desert.

Solitude is not always to be found in the midst of forests and rocks. The unhappy are alone everywhere.

What were the circumstances that brought you here? Is this your native place?

The Imitation of Jesus Christ teaches us that he who loves his cell will find in it peace. I am beginning to feel the truth of these consoling words. The sense of loneliness is relieved by labour.

The man who works is never altogether wretched.

Of this I am a proof. In fine weather, the cultivation of my garden and flowerbed gives me enough employment; and during winter I make baskets and mats. I also make my own clothes.

A hazy reminiscence seems to tell me that I once lived there in happier times whose memory has faded from me. Above all, I love to watch the distant mountains mingle on the horizon with the sky.

Distance, like futurity, excites hope in my breast.

My heavy heart beats with the faith in a far-off land, where, on some future day, I may, perhaps, taste that happiness for which I sigh, and which a secret instinct presents incessantly to my mind as possible.

In my transports—shall I confess it?—I have more than once clasped the trees of the forest in my arms, and asked God to animate them for me, and give me a friend.

But the trees are mute.

Their cold bark, which has nothing in common with my palpitating, burning heart, repels me.

Yes, and I should have pressed it heartily.

It would have been the first time such a kindness had been shown me. No one has ever pressed my hand.

What! with the exception of the sister of whom you have spoken, you have formed no acquaintance, you have never been beloved by any fellow creature?

Full of these sad thoughts, I forgot the existence of any source of consolation; I forgot my own self. “Why,” I asked, “was light bestowed upon me? Why is nature unjust and harsh to me alone?

Like a disinherited son, I have under my eyes the rich patrimony of the human family⁠—but Heaven grudges me my share.

No, no,” at length I exclaimed, in the violence of my rage, “earth has no happiness for thee! Die, wretched creature! Long enough has the earth been defiled by thy presence;

A little while afterwards, she expressed a wish to be taken outside the tower, and to offer up her prayers in her hazel copse where she used to spend the greater part of the time in fine weather.

“I should like to see the sky,” she said, “when I am dying.”

But I did not think her last hour was so near. I passed my arm round her, to raise her, but she said, “Let me lean on you, I think I shall be able to walk.”

Prascovia asked ordinarily for bread, said how exhausted she was, and how much she needed a little rest; and when she was admitted into a house, she mentioned her name, and made her host acquainted with her history.

The way in which she performed her journey, gave her many opportunities of looking deeply into the human heart.

Oftentimes, those who had refused her a shelter, recalled her, when they saw her depart with big tears in her eyes, and became kind to her. Beggars accustomed to be refused, are little distressed at it;

The clerks, to whom she whispered her request, looked up to her, and then continued to write, without taking any farther notice of her.

Some other persons, whom she was about to address, turned aside to avoid her, as they would a pillar which obstructed their way.

At last an old soldier, who served as doorkeeper and sergeant-at-arms, and who was hurrying with rapid steps through the saloon, met her, and passing to the right to get out of her way, while she turned to the same side, to make room for …

But probably nobody imagined what she wanted. This is inevitable in large cities.

Opulence and misery, happiness and distress, elbow each other, and yet remain forever separate, unless benevolence and pity, or the exertions of charitable persons, bring them into closer connection than accidental meetings.

One day, however, one of the clerks, who probably had already become accustomed to her face, stopped beside her, accepted the petition, and took from his pocket a packet of papers. The unfortunate girl began to feel some hope;

Being once interrupted in her narrative, in the presence of a numerous company, by a person, who asked her for what crime her father had been banished, she answered indignantly, and in a tone of cold reproof:

“Sir, a father is never culpable in the eyes of his children, and mine is innocent.”

Though she could not but observe the enthusiasm she inspired, in the unconscious display of the noble qualities of her soul, it had no influence on her behaviour or language;

“What an ugly thing! what does this represent?” Having never heard of mythology, it was difficult to make her understand the subject of the picture. But when she was told, that it was a fable, she said:

“I thought that there was no truth in it: men with goats’ feet! what folly to paint things that never have existed, as if there were a want of true ones.”

Poor Prascovia was doomed to learn, at the age of twenty-one, what commonly is taught to children. However, her curiosity was never indiscreet;