Quotes from Gabriel Chevallier

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.

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

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.

In short, the war got off to a pretty good start, with the help of chaos.

Men were snoring, twitching and whimpering, struggling with nightmares less terrible than reality.

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....

Men are sheep. Which is why armies and wars are possible. They die victims of their stupid docility.

the schoolmaster was one of those men for whom virtuous indignation was a necessity.

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.

The desire for carnal possession quickly cools, whereas the desire to own land never quits the heart of man.

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.

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.

It is something of a tragedy for young girls of good family that they cannot carry on a love-affair in a simple, straightforward way, in secret, below their station if need be, as do their sisters of humbler origin, who can place their affections wherever they wish without risk of misdirecting a family fortune or making a 'bad match'.

The death of the Curé Ponosse occurred in the vintage month, when his beloved Clochemerle was impregnated with the odour of new wine, in the golden glory of a brilliant, hot September. The old priest died in the apotheosis of a great year, famous for its wine, one of those years whose fragrant soul is destined to be poured, later, from bottles, to rejoice the heart of man, to celebrate earth's abundance, the memories of happy days, and perfect summers.

It was true that the elders found everything changing all about them with a precipitation which was leaving them stripped of authority. The girls (kids they remembered no bigger than that) suddenly flowered and married. The lads returned from their military service with blasé airs and a new vocabulary. A horde of new brats was born, making their disprespectful uproar in Clochemerle.

There is something relentless about the serenity of nature which has a crushing effect on the human mind. The lavish splendour of her phases, which completely ignores human strife, fills the race of men with the sensation of their own ephemeral insignificance and drives them mad.

Women all have the same female pretentions and even the most virtuous among them like to convince themselves that they can tempt a man.

Love is a transaction, at least of emotions in the rarest cases: you love to get something in return.

More than anything I am afraid of fear itself overwhelming me. One must use any bit of folly to control it.

If you want a woman to be sprightly in bed, you must leave her a margin of fun.

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.

A man has the right to be stupid on his own account, but not on behalf of others.

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.

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.