Alain-Fournier > Quotes

“This evening, which I have tried to spirit away, is a strange burden to me. While time moves on, while the day will soon end and I already wish it gone, there are men who have entrusted all their hopes to it, all their love and their last efforts. There are dying men or others who are waiting for a debt to come due, who wish that tomorrow would never come. There are others for whom the day will break like a pang of remorse; and others who are tired, for whom the night will never be long enough to give them the rest that they need. And I - who have lost my day - what right do I have to wish that tomorrow comes?”
― Henri Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes

“Je pensais de meme que notre jeunesse etait finie et le bonheur manqué.

I thought too that our youth was over and we had failed to find happiness.”
― Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes

“Weeks went by, then months. I am speaking of a far-away time - a vanished happiness. It fell to me to befriend, to console with whatever words I could find, one who had been the fairy, the princess, the mysterious love-dream of our adolescence - and it fell to me because my companion had fled. Of that period ... what can I say? I've kept a single image of that time, and it is already fading: the image of a lovely face grown thin and of two eyes whose lids slowly droop as they glance at me, as if her gaze was unable to dwell on anything but an inner world.”
― Henri Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes

“Be my friends against the day I shall be on the brink of hell, as I was once before”
― Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes

“If you feel you ought to go, if I came to you at a moment when nothing could make you happy, if it's necessary for you to leave me now so that you may some day come back to me at peace, then it is I who ask you to go...”
― Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes

“The rain is, in a sense,
The sole sad friend of those who find themselves
Thinking, wide awake, until the dawn,
Who, in bed, alone, with fevered hands,
Listen to it, soothed. They like the company
Of its faint moan across the sleeping plain,
Its rustling in the garden all night long.

- On the Great Grey Road (Sur ce Grand Chemin Gris...)”
― Alain-Fournier, Poems

“I've kept a single image of that time, and it is already fading: the image of a lovely face grown thin and of two eyes whose lids slowly droop as they glance at me, as if her gaze was unable to dwell on anything but an inner world.”
― Henri Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes

“We said to him: here is your happiness, here is what you spent your whole youth looking for, here is the girl you saw in all your dreams!
How could anyone, pushed by the shoulders like that, avoid a reaction of indecision, then fear, then dismay--how could he resist the temptation to escape?”
― Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes

“By what right do I, who have wasted this day, make claims on tomorrow?”
― Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes

“This was the setting in which the most troubled and most precious days of my life were lived: an abode from which our adventurings flowed out, to flow back again like waves breaking on a lonely headland.”
― Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes

“Tranquil since he had arranged his room, the boy felt perfectly happy. He was there, mysterious, a stranger, in the middle of an unknown world, in the room he had chosen.”
― Alain-Fournier, Big Meaulnes

“But how can a man who has once strayed into Heaven ever hope to make terms with the earth! What passes for happiness with most people seemed contemptible to me. And when I tried, deliberately and sincerely, to live like the rest of them, I stored up enough remorse to last me a very long time.”
― Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes

“Mothers, do you wonder of an evening,
About the tears, the sadness, the passions of your children?

- Tale of the Sun and the Road”
― Alain-Fournier, Poems

“Mais quelqu'un est venu qui m'a enlevé à tous ces plaisirs d'enfant paisible. Quelqu'un a soufflé la bougie qui éclairait pour moi le doux visage maternel penché sur le repas du soir. Quelqu'un a éteint la lampe autour de laquelle nous étions une famille heureuse, à la nuit, lorsque mon père avait accroché les volets de bois aux portes vitrées. Et celui-là, ce fut Augustin Meaulnes, que les autres élèves appelèrent bientôt le grand Meaulnes.”
― Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes

“He kept walking, stopping and then setting off again more quickly like a man in search of memories which he sorts out, challenges and compares, ponders on, thinks he has discovered, and then the thread breaking the search begins once more . . .”
― Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes

“she had been the fairy, the princess and the mysterious love of all our adolescence”
― Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes

“A mezzogiorno Madame Meaulnes arrivò con la sua carrozza, fece colazione col figlio al Café Daniel e appena il cavallo fu governato e attaccato, lo portò via senza darci nessuna spiegazione […].
Avevo l'impressione che in quell'antiquata carrozza la mia adolescenza se ne stesse andando per sempre.”
― Alain Fournier, El gran Meaulnes

“Lorsque j’avais découvert le Domaine sans nom, j’étais à une hauteur, à un degré de perfection et de pureté que je n’atteindrai jamais plus. Dans la mort seulement, comme je te l’écrivais un jour, je retrouverai peut-être la beauté de ce temps-là…”
― Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes

“Mas então adianto-me e tomo o único partido possível: com a ajuda do médico e de uma das mulheres, passando o braço sob as costas da morta, o outro sob as pernas, carrego-a de encontro a meu peito. Sentada em meu braço esquerdo, os ombros apoiados no meu braço direito, a cabeça caída encostada sob meu queixo, Yvonne pesa; terrivelmente sobre o meu coração. Desço lentamente, degrau a degrau, a comprida e íngreme escada, enquanto embaixo tudo já está a postos.”
― Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes

“... the old Berlin – last vestige of a mysterious fête – wheeled away from the gravelled road and went lurching noiselessly across country over a grass-grown track. Beyond the hedge nothing could be seen of it but the driver's cap bobbing up and down.”
― Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes

“Je cherche la clef de ces évasions vers les pays désirés – et c’est peut-être la mort, après tout.”
― Alain-Fournier

“with the feeling that inside the old carriage my adolescence had just vanished for evermore”
― Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes

“اما کسی که یک بار گذارش به بهشت افتاده چطور می تواند با زندگی عادی کنار بیاید؟”
― Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes

“هنگامی که می خواستم از آنجا بروم دختری یا- نمی دانم- زن جوانی آمد و روی یکی از نیمکتهای خیس از باران نشست. پیراهنش سیاه بود و یقه ی پرچین سفیدی داشت. وقتی می آمدم هنوز آنجا بود، بی اعتنا به سرمای دم غروب بی حرکت آنجا نشسته بود، چیزی یا کسی را انتظار می کشیدو همان طور که می بینی پاریس پر از آدمهایی است که مثل من خل اند.”
― Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes

“هنوز چیزی نگذشته یکی از کوچولوهایی که روی زمین نشسته بودند به سویش آمد،از بازویش گرفت و بالا رفت و روی زانویش نشست تا با با او کتاب را تماشا کند؛ کودک دیگری هم از آن طرف بالا رفت و روی زانوی دیگرش نشست. آنگاه بود که رویایی همانند آنچه سالها پیش دیده بود به سراغش آمد. زمان درازی خود را در حالتی مجسم کرد که در شب خوش و دل انگیزی در خانه ی خودش نشسته است و کتاب می خواند و آن زیبای ناشناسی که پیانو می زند همسر اوست...”
― Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes

“هنوز چیزی نگذشته یکی از کوچولوهایی که روی زمین نشسته بودند به سویش آمد،از بازویش گرفت و بالا رفت و روی زانویش نشست تا با با او کتاب را تماشا کند؛ کودک دیگری هم از آن طرف بالا رفت و روی زانوی دیگرش نشست. آنگاه بود که رویایی همانند آنچه سالها پیش دیده بود به سراغش آمد. زمان درازی خود را در حالتی مجسم کرد که در شب خوش و دا انگیزی در خانه ی خودش نشسته است و کتاب می خواند و آن زیبای ناشناسی که پیانو می زند همسر اوست...”
― Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes

“و نسیمی که می وزید گاهی از سرما تنمان را می لرزاند و گاهی از ولرمی شور ژرف کهنه ی ناشناخته ای را در دلمان بر می انگیخت. آه! برادر، دوست، همسفر، هر دو چه مطمئن بودیم که خوشبختی در همان نزدیکی است، و کافیست به راه بیفتیم تا به آن برسیم!...”
― Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes

“برای جوان های معمولی هم دوچرخه وسیله ی بسیار سرگرم کننده ای است تا چه رسد به پسرک بینوایی چون من که تا همان اواخر می لنگیدم و هنوز سه چهار کیلومتر نرفته خیس عرق می شدم!... چه لذتی از شیب تپه ها به شتاب پایین رفتن و در ژرفاهای چشم انداز گم شدن؛ به تیزی پرنده ای به دور دستهای جاده ای رسیدن که با نزدیک شدنت از هم باز و شکوفان می شود؛ دهکده ای را در یک چشم به هم زدن پشت سر گذاشتن و همه چیزش را به یک نگاه از آن خود کردن و بردن...”
― Alain-Fournier