More quotes from Bel-Ami
Apr. 20th, 2009 05:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
narcasse"There was a long silence, a painful, profound silence. The fiery sunset was slowly fading away; the mountains were turning black against the deepening red sky. Glowing shadows, a beginning of darkness which still held gleams of dying embers was coming into the room, tinting furniture, walls, draperies, and corners in shadows of inky purple. The mirror over the mantelpiece, where the horizon was reflected, looked like a disk of blood."
(p. 133)
"They both watched a butterfly gathering its food from the carnations, going from one to another with a rapid fluttering of its wings, which continued beating slowly after it had settled on the flower."
(p. 139)
"Night was falling softly, enveloping the vast plain stretching over to the right in translucent shadows, like a gauzy mourning veil. The train was travelling along the Seine, and the young people begin watching as, on the river that unwound beside the track like a broad ribbon of burnished metal, glints of red appeared, patches fallen from a sky that the departing sun had daubed with tones of purple and flame. These glimmers were gradually fading, turning a deeper shade, growing dark and sad. The plain was sinking into blackness with an ominous shudder, that shudder of death which every twilight visits upon the earth."
(p. 160)
"He was one of those political creatures of many faces, with no convictions, no great resources, no audacity, and no real attainments; a country lawyer, a handsome small-town gentleman, who maintained a crafty balance between the various political extremes, a sort of republican Jesuit and liberal champion of a dubious kind, such as spring up by the hundreds on the popular dunghill of universal suffrage."
(p. 174)
"The bitterness in his heart was bringing words of scorn and loathing to his lips. But he did not give them voice. He kept telling himself: ‘The world is to the strong. I must be strong. I must rise above everything.’"
(p. 181)
"‘Everyone for himself. It’s boldness that wins the day. There’s nothing but selfishness.’"
(p. 181)
"And, so that she would not suspect anything, he kissed her.
It seemed to Madeleine that her husband’s lips were icy cold. But as he helped her out of the cab in front of the café steps, he was smiling his usual smile."
(p. 182)
"Her manner was, as always, composed and well bred, with a certain air of maternal placidity that rendered her virtually invisible to a roving male eye. Furthermore, she rarely spoke, except to say reasonable things that were widely known and accepted, for her ideas were judicious, systematic, well organized, and free of all excess."
(p. 187)
"‘How nice, to be able to use religion like an umbrella-cum-sunshade. When it’s fine, you’ve a walking-stick, when it’s sunny, a parasol, when it rains an umbrella and, if you don’t go out, you can leave it in the hall.’"
(p. 201)
"She had turned out to be quite different from what he had imagined, attempting to captivate him with a youthful winsomeness and childish love-play that were ridiculous at her age. This virtuous woman who had, until then, lived an entirely respectable life, a virgin at heart, impervious to emotion and oblivious of sensuality, had suddenly found her tranquil middle age, which had been like a pallid autumn followed upon a chilly summer, transmuted into a kind of faded spring, full of little half-open blossoms and aborted buds, a strange flowering of adolescent love, passionate and artless, made up of unexpected transports, of little girlish cries, of embarrassing sweet-talk, of charms that had aged without ever being young."
(p. 217)
- De Maupassant, G. Trans: M. Mauldon. 2001. Bel-Ami Oxford: Oxford University Press.
(p. 133)
"They both watched a butterfly gathering its food from the carnations, going from one to another with a rapid fluttering of its wings, which continued beating slowly after it had settled on the flower."
(p. 139)
"Night was falling softly, enveloping the vast plain stretching over to the right in translucent shadows, like a gauzy mourning veil. The train was travelling along the Seine, and the young people begin watching as, on the river that unwound beside the track like a broad ribbon of burnished metal, glints of red appeared, patches fallen from a sky that the departing sun had daubed with tones of purple and flame. These glimmers were gradually fading, turning a deeper shade, growing dark and sad. The plain was sinking into blackness with an ominous shudder, that shudder of death which every twilight visits upon the earth."
(p. 160)
"He was one of those political creatures of many faces, with no convictions, no great resources, no audacity, and no real attainments; a country lawyer, a handsome small-town gentleman, who maintained a crafty balance between the various political extremes, a sort of republican Jesuit and liberal champion of a dubious kind, such as spring up by the hundreds on the popular dunghill of universal suffrage."
(p. 174)
"The bitterness in his heart was bringing words of scorn and loathing to his lips. But he did not give them voice. He kept telling himself: ‘The world is to the strong. I must be strong. I must rise above everything.’"
(p. 181)
"‘Everyone for himself. It’s boldness that wins the day. There’s nothing but selfishness.’"
(p. 181)
"And, so that she would not suspect anything, he kissed her.
It seemed to Madeleine that her husband’s lips were icy cold. But as he helped her out of the cab in front of the café steps, he was smiling his usual smile."
(p. 182)
"Her manner was, as always, composed and well bred, with a certain air of maternal placidity that rendered her virtually invisible to a roving male eye. Furthermore, she rarely spoke, except to say reasonable things that were widely known and accepted, for her ideas were judicious, systematic, well organized, and free of all excess."
(p. 187)
"‘How nice, to be able to use religion like an umbrella-cum-sunshade. When it’s fine, you’ve a walking-stick, when it’s sunny, a parasol, when it rains an umbrella and, if you don’t go out, you can leave it in the hall.’"
(p. 201)
"She had turned out to be quite different from what he had imagined, attempting to captivate him with a youthful winsomeness and childish love-play that were ridiculous at her age. This virtuous woman who had, until then, lived an entirely respectable life, a virgin at heart, impervious to emotion and oblivious of sensuality, had suddenly found her tranquil middle age, which had been like a pallid autumn followed upon a chilly summer, transmuted into a kind of faded spring, full of little half-open blossoms and aborted buds, a strange flowering of adolescent love, passionate and artless, made up of unexpected transports, of little girlish cries, of embarrassing sweet-talk, of charms that had aged without ever being young."
(p. 217)
- De Maupassant, G. Trans: M. Mauldon. 2001. Bel-Ami Oxford: Oxford University Press.