The Counterfeiters quotes

… Would it be becoming to question my mother? … We must give her credit for good taste. I’m free to imagine he’s a prince. It wouldn’t advance matters much to know that I was the son of a rapscallion.

There’s no better cure for the fear of taking after one’s father, than not to know who he is.

The mere fact of enquiry binds one. The only thing to do is to welcome deliverance and not attempt to go any deeper. Besides which, I’ve had sufficient for the day.”

The gathering that day was more numerous than usual—because of the fine weather, no doubt. Some of the boys who were there were newcomers, whom Bernard had never seen before.

Every one of them, as soon as he was in company with the others, lost his naturalness and began to act a part.

Olivier blushed when he saw Bernard coming up. He left the side of a young woman to whom he had been talking and walked away a little abruptly.

Up till then, Vincent had lived on the whole virtuously. His adventure with Laura appeared to him alternately, according to the moment of the day in which he thought of it, as either monstrous or perfectly natural.

It very often suffices to add together a quantity of little facts which, taken separately, are very simple and very natural, to arrive at a sum which is monstrous.

He said all this to himself over and over again as he walked along, but it didn’t get him out of his difficulties.

“No,” answered Robert. “It is to Lady Lilian that you owe them now.” And he handed her the notes, which she flung on to the divan. She was panting. She went out on the terrace to breathe.

It was that ambiguous hour when night is drawing to an end, and the devil casts up his accounts.

Outside not a sound was to be heard. Vincent had seated himself on the divan. Lilian turned towards him:

Price six sous. He has two sous left; he gallantly leaves one on the counter and holds out the other to a ragamuffin who is grubbing in a dustbin. Charity? Swagger? What does it matter? He feels as happy as a king.

He has nothing left⁠—and the whole world is his!

“I expect anything and everything from Providence,” thinks he. “If only it sets a handsome helping of roast beef before me at lunch time, I shall be willing to strike a bargain”—for last night he had gone without his dinner.

“

The difficulty in life is to take the same thing seriously for long at a time.

For instance, my mother’s love for the person I used to call my father—I believed in it for fifteen years. I still believed in it yesterday. She wasn’t able to take her love seriously, either.

“

My thoughts are always the same colour as my clothes,

” she said. (She had put on crimson and silver lamé pyjamas.) “I remember once, when I was quite a little girl at San Francisco, I was put into black because a sister of my mother’s had died—an old aunt whom I had never seen.

I cried the whole day long. I was terribly, terribly sad; I thought that I was very unhappy and that I was grieving deeply for my aunt’s death—all because I was in black.

Nowadays, if men are more serious than women, it’s because their clothes are darker.

I’ll wager that your thoughts are quite different from what they were a little while ago. Sit down there on the bed;

“And when I came to myself on board the X, which picked us up, I realized that I was no longer the same, that I never could again be the same sentimental young girl I had been before;

I realized that a part of myself had gone down with the Bourgogne; that henceforth there would be a whole heap of delicate feelings whose fingers and hands I should hack away to prevent them from climbing into my heart and wrecking it.

”

Make certain of this—

I abominate mediocrity and I can love no one who isn’t a conqueror.

If you want me, it must be to help you to victory; if it’s only to be pitied and consoled and made much of … no, my dear boy—I’d better say so at once—I’m not the person you need—it’s Laura.”

Involuntarily—unconsciously—each one of a pair of lovers fashions himself to meet the other’s requirements—endeavours by a continual effort to resemble that idol of himself which he beholds in the other’s heart. …

Whoever really loves abandons all sincerity.

This was the way in which she deluded me. Her thought everywhere companioned mine.

How vexing this question of sincerity is! Sincerity! When I say the word I think only of her. If it is myself that I consider, I cease to understand its meaning.

I am never anything but what I think myself⁠—and this varies so incessantly, that often, if I were not there to make them acquainted, my morning’s self would not recognize my evening’s.

Nothing could be more different from me than myself. It is only sometimes when I am alone that the substratum emerges and that I attain a certain fundamental continuity;

If it is myself that I consider, I cease to understand its meaning. I am never anything but what I think myself—and this varies so incessantly, that often, if I were not there to make them acquainted, my morning’s self would not recognize my evening’s.

Nothing could be more different from me than myself.

It is only sometimes when I am alone that the substratum emerges and that I attain a certain fundamental continuity; but at such times I feel that my life is slowing down, stopping, and that I am on the very verge of ceasing to exist.

but at such times I feel that my life is slowing down, stopping, and that I am on the very verge of ceasing to exist. My heart beats only out of sympathy; I live only through others—by procuration, so to speak, and by espousals; and

I never feel myself living so intensely as when I escape from myself to become no matter who.

This anti-egoistical force of decentralization is so great in me, that it disintegrates my sense of property—and, as a consequence, of responsibility. Such a being is not of the kind that one can marry. How can I make Laura understand this?

… outside myself, and as I watch myself act I cannot understand how a person who acts is the same as the person who is watching him act, and who wonders in astonishment and doubt how he can be actor and watcher at the same moment.

Psychological analysis lost all interest for me from the moment that I became aware that men feel what they imagine they feel.

From that to thinking that they imagine they feel what they feel was a very short step … ! I see it clearly in the case of my love for Laura:

I see it clearly in the case of my love for Laura: between loving her and imagining I love her—between imagining I love her less and loving her less—what God could tell the difference?

In the domain of feeling, what is real is indistinguishable from what is imaginary.

And if it is sufficient to imagine one loves, in order to love, so it is sufficient to say to oneself that when one loves one imagines one loves, in order to love a little less and even in order to detach oneself a little …

But the weight of my look makes him deviate a little from his own real direction. A personality which is over tender and still too young to be conscious of itself, takes shelter behind an attitude.

Nothing is more difficult to observe than creatures in the period of formation. One ought to look at them only sideways⁠—in profile.

The youngster suddenly declared that what he liked best was geography! I suspected that an instinct for vagabonding was concealed behind this liking.

What absurd need had Laura to talk to him about me?

What an admirable thing in women is their need for devotion! The man they love is as a rule a kind of clothes-peg on which to hang their love.

How easily and sincerely Laura has effected the transposition! I understand that she should marry Douviers; I was one of the first to advise it. But I had the right to hope for a little grief.

To which I answered, “Certainly.”

The deeper the soul plunges into religious devotion, the more it loses all sense of reality, all need, all desire, all love for reality.

I have observed the same thing in Vedel upon the few occasions that I have spoken to him. The dazzling light of their faith blinds them to the surrounding world and to their own selves.

Is it possible to conceive a more insidious poison?

It is to bastards that the future belongs. How full of meaning is the expression “a natural child!” The bastard alone has the right to be natural.

Family egoism … hardly less hideous than personal egoism.

It is to bastards that the future belongs. How full of meaning is the expression “a natural child!” The bastard alone has the right to be natural.

Family egoism⁠ ⁠… hardly less hideous than personal egoism.

Nov. 6th.—I have never been able to invent anything. But I set myself in front of reality like a painter, who should say to his model: “Take up such and such an attitude; put on such and such an expression.”

Nov. 7th.—Nothing that I wrote yesterday is true. Only this remains—that reality interests me inasmuch as it is plastic, and that

I care more⁠—infinitely more⁠—for what may be than for what has been.

I lean with a fearful attraction over the depths of each creature’s possibilities and weep for all that lies atrophied under the heavy lid of custom and morality.

Nov. 7th.—Nothing that I wrote yesterday is true. Only this remains—that reality interests me inasmuch as it is plastic, and that I care more—infinitely more—for what may be than for what has been.

I lean with a fearful attraction over the depths of each creature’s possibilities and weep for all that lies atrophied under the heavy lid of custom and morality.

Here Bernard was obliged to pause. His eyes were blurred. He was gasping as if the eagerness with which he read had made him forget to breathe. He opened the window and filled his lungs before taking another plunge.

She can’t understand that those are the only lessons that interest me; yes, the only lessons I really care about … giving. I have taken to reflecting a great deal lately. Here! there’s something I should like to ask you.

Why is it there is so little about old people in books?

… I suppose it’s because old people aren’t able to write themselves and young ones don’t take any interest in them. No one’s interested in an old man. … And yet there are a great many curious things that might be said about them.

For instance: there are certain acts in my past life which I’m only just beginning to understand. Yes, I’m just beginning to understand that they haven’t at all the meaning I attached to them in the old days when I did them. …

I’ve only just begun to understand that I have been a dupe during the whole of my life.

Madame de La Pérouse has fooled me; my son has fooled me; everybody has fooled me; God has fooled me. …”

“Oh, nowhere particular.

I always seem most in a hurry when I have nothing to do.

”

… Oh, foolish words, which I write in spite of myself and which discover the duplicity of my heart. … I am leaving for London tomorrow. I have suddenly made up my mind to go away. It is time.

To go away because one is too anxious to stay!

… A certain love of the arduous—a horror of indulgence (towards oneself, I mean) is perhaps the part of my Puritan upbringing which I find it hardest to free myself from.

Yesterday, at Smith’s, bought a copybook (English already) in which to continue my diary. I will write nothing more in this one. A new copybook! …

Ah! if it were myself I could leave behind!

Bernard had given himself away; he had spoken too quickly and had not been able to resist bragging a little. He shook his head. Laura’s face grew still darker. At that moment a knock was heard at the door.

Whether they will or no, a link is created between two creatures who experience a common emotion.

Bernard felt himself trapped; Laura was vexed at being surprised in company. They looked at each other like two accomplices. Another knock was heard. Both together said:

Vincent’s education, which had been materialistic in tendency, prevented him from believing in the supernatural—which gave the demon an immense advantage. The demon never made a frontal attack upon Vincent; he approached him crookedly and furtively.

One of his cleverest manoeuvres consists in presenting us our defeats as if they were victories.

What inclined Vincent to consider his behaviour to Laura as a victory of his will over his affections, was that, being naturally kindhearted, he had been obliged to force himself, to steel himself to be hard to her.

But that’s exactly what terrifies me. No; be quiet. … All day long I’ve kept thinking of what you told me this morning about the wreck of the Bourgogne, and of the people who wanted to get into the boat having their hands cut off.

It seems to me that something wants to get into my boat⁠—I’m using your image, so that you may understand me⁠—something that I want to prevent getting in.⁠ ⁠…

”

And I had been looking forward to it with such joy. … I hope it has left him as ill-satisfied as it has me—as ill-satisfied with himself as with me. I was no more able to talk than to get him to talk.

Oh, how difficult the slightest word is, when it involves the whole assent of the whole being! When the heart comes into play, it numbs and paralyses the brain.

Seven o’clock. Found my suitcase; or at any rate the person who took it. The fact that he is Olivier’s most intimate friend makes a link between us which it rests only with me to tighten.

“

Oh! How long shall we have to wait for the resolution of the chord?

”

She was silent for a moment or two, and then: “ ‘Invention,’ ‘diseased imagination’ … no, no, that’s not it.

Words betray one’s meaning.

Boris dreams aloud in my presence. Every morning he consents to remain during one hour in that state of semi-somnolence in which the images which present themselves to us escape from the control of our reason.

above all, they answer to a mysterious inward compulsion—which is the very thing I want to discover; and the ramblings of this child are far more instructive than the most intelligent analysis of the most conscious of minds could be.

Many things escape the reason, and a person who should attempt to understand life by merely using his reason would be like a man trying to take hold of a flame with the tongs.

Nothing remains but a bit of charred wood, which immediately stops flaming.”

This might almost make one suppose that he loved Bernard? … No; I think not.

But a little vanity is quite as effectual in making us pose as a great deal of love.

“Is it because the novel, of all literary genres, is the freest, the most lawless,” held forth Edouard, “… is it for that very reason, for fear of that very liberty (the artists who are always sighing after liberty are often the most bewildered when …

Up till now we have been given nothing but novels with a purpose parading as novels of ideas. But that’s not it at all, as you may imagine.

Ideas⁠ ⁠… ideas, I must confess, interest me more than men⁠—interest me more than anything.

They live; they fight; they perish like men. Of course it may be said that our only knowledge of them is through men, just as our only knowledge of the wind is through the reeds that it bends;

Oh, Laura! I should like all my life long, at the very smallest shock, to ring true, with a pure, authentic sound. Nearly all the people I have known ring false.

To be worth exactly what one seems to be worth⁠—not to try to seem to be worth more.⁠ ⁠…

One wants to deceive people, and one is so much occupied with seeming, that one ends by not knowing what one really is. … Forgive me for talking like this. They are my last night’s reflections.”

Nearly all the people I have known ring false. To be worth exactly what one seems to be worth—not to try to seem to be worth more. …

One wants to deceive people, and one is so much occupied with seeming, that one ends by not knowing what one really is.

… Forgive me for talking like this. They are my last night’s reflections.”

… if only there were nothing but honest folk. Why, if anyone were to ask me today what virtue I considered the finest, I should answer without hesitation—honesty. Oh, Laura!

I should like all my life long, at the very smallest shock, to ring true, with a pure, authentic sound.

Nearly all the people I have known ring false. To be worth exactly what one seems to be worth—not to try to seem to be worth more.

In reality I don’t know what I think of him. He is never the same for long together. He is attached to nothing, but nothing is more attractive than his elusiveness. He is perpetually forming, unforming, reforming himself. One thinks one has grasped him. …

Proteus! He takes the shape of what he loves, and oneself must love him to understand him.

”

that there was nothing more for me, that I let myself go. I lived that last spring at Pau as if I were never to see another—as if nothing mattered any more. I can tell you now, Bernard, now that I’ve been punished for it—

Never despair of life!

”

What I dislike about Edouard are the reasons he gives himself. Why does he try and persuade himself that he is conspiring for Boris’s good?

Does the torrent which drowns a child pretend that it is giving him drink?⁠ ⁠…

I do not deny that there are actions in the world that are noble, generous and even disinterested;

“And do you know why?” he went on. “Nine times out of ten, when the husband submits to his wife, it is because he has something to be forgiven him.

A virtuous woman, my dear fellow, takes advantage of everything.

If the man stoops for a second, there she is sitting on his shoulders. Oh! we poor husbands are sometimes greatly to be pitied.

She wants to hide it from my parents. She has already given up half her ‘dot’ to make Laura’s a little larger; but this time all the rest of it has gone. She didn’t tell you anything about that, I bet. Her modesty exasperates me.

It’s one of the most sinister jokes in this world below that every time anyone sacrifices himself for others, one may be perfectly certain he is worth more than they.

… Just look at all she has done for Laura! And how she has rewarded her! The slut! …”

“

Well, you must allow it’s a melancholy business when love, instead of making the happiness of life, becomes its calamity.⁠ ⁠… That’s no doubt the way God loves us.

”

“

Though I didn’t kill myself, I am none the less dead.

Here or there, it doesn’t matter to me. You can take me away.”

“Then it’s not worth while my repeating it. No, old boy; no; I don’t know whether I shall write.

It sometimes seems to me that writing prevents one from living, and that one can express oneself better by acts than by words.

”

“No,” said Bernard; “more than ever.

I think it’s the special quality of love not to be able to remain stationary, to be obliged to increase under pain of diminishing; and that’s what distinguishes it from friendship.

”

Those novelists deceive us who show the individual’s development without taking into account the pressure of surroundings.

The forest fashions the tree.

To each one how small a place is given! How many buds are atrophied! One shoots one’s branches where one can. The mystic bough is due more often than not to stifling. The only escape is upwards.

In my conversation with her the day before yesterday, I was able to gauge his limits. How in the world could Pauline have married him? …

Alas! the most lamentable lack of all⁠—lack of character⁠—is a hidden one, to be revealed only by time and usage.

Pauline puts all her efforts into palliating Oscar’s insufficiencies and weaknesses, into hiding them from everyone; and especially from his children. Her utmost ingenuity is employed in enabling them to respect their father; and she is really hard put to it;

Armand shook off the hand that Olivier had placed affectionately on his arm.

“Others,” said he, “have the feeling of what they possess; I have only the feeling of what I lack. Lack of money, lack of strength, lack of intelligence, lack of love⁠—an everlasting deficit. I shall never be anything but below the mark.”

He went up to the toilette table, dipped a hairbrush in the dirty water in the basin and plastered his hair down in hideous fashion over his forehead.

When he had felt Edouard’s hand laid upon his arm, he thought he was going to faint, and let himself be led away unresisting. Of all that Edouard had said to him, he only understood that he had called him “thou.”

As a storm-cloud bursts into rain, he felt his heart suddenly dissolve in tears.

A damp towel which Edouard put to his forehead brought him finally to his sober senses again. What had happened? He was vaguely conscious of having behaved like a child, like a brute. He felt himself ridiculous, abject.

Pauline drew herself up abruptly. She looked at me and shrugged her shoulders.

“It’s always when a woman appears most resigned that she seems the most reasonable,” she cried, almost vindictively.

This reflection irritated me, by reason of its very justice. In order not to show it, I asked:

“So was I. I was expecting an explanation.

All one’s life long one expects explanations.

”

“But, my dear friend, you know well enough that nothing lasts more eternally than a false situation. It’s the business of you novelists to try to solve them.

In real life nothing is solved; everything continues.

We remain in our uncertainty; and we shall remain to the very end without knowing what to make of things. In the meantime life goes on and on, the same as ever. And one gets resigned to that too;

I felt, in his very agitation, how weak he still was, and rocked him in my arms, like a child, without saying anything. He was in need of rest; his silence made me hope he was asleep; but at last I heard him murmur:

“When I am with you, I am too happy to sleep.”

He did not let me leave him till morning.

everything seemed limpid, bathed in azure. Edouard had not been out for three days. His heart was dilated by an immense joy; and even his whole being, like an opened, empty wrapping, seemed floating on a shoreless sea, a divine ocean of loving-kindness.

Love and fine weather have this power of boundlessly enlarging our contours.

Edouard knew that he would want a taxi to bring back Olivier’s things; but he was in no hurry to take one; he enjoyed walking. The state of benevolence in which he felt himself towards the whole world, was no good preparation for facing Passavant.

These feelings ring as false as counters, but they pass current. And as everyone knows that ‘bad money drives out good,’ a man who should offer the public real coins would seem to be defrauding us.

In a world in which everyone cheats, it’s the honest man who passes for a charlatan.

I give you fair warning—if I edit a review, it will be in order to prick bladders—in order to demonetize fine feelings, and those promissory notes which go by the name of words.”

When I was younger, I used to make resolutions, which I imagined were virtuous. I was less anxious to be what I was, than to become what I wished to be.

Now, I am not far from thinking that in irresolution lies the secret of not growing old.

Olivier has asked me what I am working at. I let myself be carried away into talking of my book, and even—he seemed so much interested—into reading him the pages I had just written.

To what use am I to put it? How am I to get out of myself the best that’s in me? Is it by aiming at a goal? But how choose such a goal? How know what it is before reaching it?”

“To live without a goal, is to give oneself up to chance.”

“I am afraid you don’t understand. When Columbus discovered America did he know towards what he was sailing? His goal was to go ahead, straight in front of him. Himself was his goal, impelling him to go ahead. …”

“I have often thought,” interrupted Edouard, “that in art, and particularly in literature, the only people who count are those who launch out on to unknown seas.

One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. But our writers are afraid of the open; they are mere coasters.

”

“That in itself will teach you.

It’s a good thing to follow one’s inclination, provided it leads up hill.

”

But while I am developing myself, as you say, I shall have to earn my living. What do you say to an alluring advertisement in the papers: ‘Young man of great promise requires a job. Could be employed in any capacity?’ ”

“No job is so difficult to find as any job. Better be a little more explicit.”

“Perhaps one of the innumerable little wheels in the organization of a big newspaper would do? Oh! I’d accept any post however subordinate—proofreader—printer’s devil—anything. I need so little.”

“Oh, simplicity! What a pure angelic soul you possess! As if we weren’t all playing parts more or less sincerely and consciously.

Life, my dear fellow, is nothing but a comedy.

But the difference between you and me is that I know I am playing a part, whilst. …”

If his faith failed, my dear fellow, why, it would be a catastrophic collapse! And reflect, that at the same time my family would cease to have anything to live on. That’s a fact that must be taken into consideration, old boy.

Papa’s faith is our means of subsistence.

So that to come and ask me if Papa’s faith is genuine, is not, you must admit, a very tactful proceeding on your part.”