Gabriel Chevallier > Quotes

“Men are stupid and ignorant. That is why they suffer. Instead of thinking, they believe all that they are told, all that they are taught. They choose their lords and masters without judging them, with a fatal taste for slavery.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Fear

“I carry my liberty with me. It is in my thoughts, in my head. Shakespeare is one of my countries, Goethe another. You can change that badge that I wear, but you can’t change the way I think. It is through my intellect that I can escape the roles, intrusions, and obligations with which every civilisation, every community would burden me. I make myself my own homeland through my affinities, my choices, my ideas, and no one can take it away from me – I may even be able to enlarge it. I don’t spend my life in the company of crowds but individuals. If I could pick fifty individuals from each nation, then perhaps I could put together a society I’d be happy with. My first possession is myself; better to sent it into exile than to lose it, to change a few habits rather than terminate my role as a human being. We only have one homeland: the world.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Fear

“There is nothing in human affairs that is a true subject for ridicule. Beneath comedy lies the ferment of tragedy; the farcical is but a cloak for coming catastrophe.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Clochemerle

“In short, the war got off to a pretty good start, with the help of chaos.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Fear

“Men were snoring, twitching and whimpering, struggling with nightmares less terrible than reality.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Fear

“He was regarded merely as an eccentric employee of indifferent merit, and his post of deputy chief clerk was the highest he would ever reach. Well aware of this, he made it a rule never to show any zeal, except in special circumstances. It is true that in these cases his zeal was clothed with a spirit of vengeance directed against the whole human race—this being his second favourite occupation. Petitbidois would have liked to hold the reins of power. This being beyond his sphere, he utilized the small driblets of authority which came his way for the purpose of casting ridicule upon established law and order, by making it act as a sort of unintelligent and, if possible, malicious Providence. 'The world is an idiot place anyway,' he would say, 'so why worry? Life is just a lottery. Let us leave the decision to chance.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Clochemerle

“The law, as manipulated by clever and highly respected rascals, still remains the best avenue for a career of honourable and leisurely plunder.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Clochemerle

“My county? Another concept to which you attach from a distance a rather vague ideal. You want to know what "my country" really is? Nothing more or less than a gathering of shareholders, a form of property, bourgeois mentality, and vanity. Think about all the people in your country whom you wouldn't go near, and you'll see that the ties that are supposed to bind us together don't go very deep....”
― Gabriel Chevallier

“For the wine of Clochemerle is at once exquisite and treacherous; it charms first the nose, then the palate, finally the entire man. Mark well that if it makes a man drunk it does not do so malignantly. It produces an enchanting light-heartedness, an intellectual sparkle which liberates the drinker from the constraints and conventions which bind him in his daily life.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Clochemerle-Babylon

“The Curé Noive had a sister who acted as his housekeeper, a lady with a moustache, whose piety was astringent, and who fostered a splenetic God in a heart which was outraged at anything gracious, tender, or lovable that life might offer. There are such cross-grained natures, made spiteful and furious by anything that looks like happiness.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Clochemerle-Babylon

“Once again was it proved that the designs of Providence are impenetrable and that the sinner, climbing out of the pit of his filthiness, may feel himself touched by grace.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Clochemerle-Babylon

“She was one of those women who are usually referred to in the past tense, of whom one says: 'She had a certain freshness and bloom about her,' and whose freshness and bloom passed unnoticed even when she still had them.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Clochemerle

“God? Come off it, the heavens are empty, as empty as a corpse. There’s nothing in the sky but shells and all the other murderous devices made by men . . .”
― Gabriel Chevalier, La Peur

“...the schoolmaster was one of those men for whom virtuous indignation was a necessity.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Clochemerle

“The desire for carnal possession quickly cools, whereas the desire to own land never quits the heart of man.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Clochemerle-Babylon

“Enter Justine Putet, of whom it is now time to speak. Imagine a swarthy-looking, ill-tempered person, dried-up and of viperish disposition, with a bad complexion, an evil expression, a cruel tongue, defective internal economy, and (over all this) a layer of aggressive piety and loathsome suavity of speech. A paragon of virtue of a kind that filled you with dismay, for virtue in such a guise as this is detestable to behold, and in this instance it seemed to be inspired by a spirit of hatred and vengeance rather than by ordinary feelings of kindness. An energetic user of rosaries, a fervent petitioner at her prayers, but also an unbridled sower of calumny and clandestine panic. In a word, she was the scorpion of Clochemerle, but a scorpion disguised as a woman of genuine piety.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Clochemerle

“Men are sheep. Which is why armies and wars are possible. They die victims of their stupid docility.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Heldenangst

“You don't by chance believe that the war has killed all the halfwits? They belong to a race that will never die out. I'm sure there was a halfwit in Noah's Ark and he was the most prolific male on God's blessed raft!”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Fear

“They had also brought in a piece of human scrap so monstrous that everyone recoiled at the sight, that it shocked men who were no longer shockable. I shut my eyes; I had already seen far too much and I wanted to be able to forget eventually. This thing, this being, screamed in a corner like a maniac. The revulsion that turned our stomachs told us that it would be an act of generosity, a fraternal act, to finish him off.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Fear

“If sharing meant receiving, well and good, but if it was a question of giving, then to hell with it, the Clochemerlins would cry out in chorus. Sad to relate, these bumpkins knew nothing about Hegel or Marx. They each had their little patch of ground inherited from previous generations, their trade secrets handed down from father to son, and they could see no farther.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Clochemerle-les-Bains [English language]

“Her own nose was too long and her facial structure too bony for anyone ever to have asked her hand in marriage. She consoled herself for this by guzzling.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Clochemerle-les-Bains [English language]

“So many people live in fear, fear of losing what they have, the little job that provides their daily bread, the wife they have managed to acquire, fear for their health, fear on account of their children, fear at the thought of old age.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Clochemerle-les-Bains [English language]

“Victorious troops are those who kill more, and here we were the victims. This put the finishing touch to our demoralisation. The soldiers had lost conviction long ago. Now they lost confidence.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Fear

“More than anything I am afraid of fear itself overwhelming me. One must use any bit of folly to control it.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Fear

“So, in order to be courageous, I now have a fairly simple means at my disposal: to accept death.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Fear

“Love is a transaction, at least of emotions in the rarest cases: you love to get something in return.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Fear

“As everyone knows, people revert to virtuous ways when they are too old for their virtue to be endangered. The confessor was not deceived by any of these women who repented out of impotence or malice and were inclined to criticize in others the very aberrations of which they themselves had formerly been guilty.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Clochemerle-les-Bains [English language]

“Women all have the same female pretentions and even the most virtuous among them like to convince themselves that they can tempt a man.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Fear

“I know I am incapable of courage unless I have decided to give my life. Without that choice, there is nothing but flight. But you take such a decision on the spur of the moment and you cannot make it last for weeks and months. The mental effort is too great. Hence the rarity of true courage. We generally accept a kind of lame compromise between the destiny and the man, which reason rejects.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Fear

“The Church should adapt itself to the manners of the time, since it seems only too clear that the manners of the time adapt themselves less and less to the Church.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Clochemerle-les-Bains [English language]