Index
Fiction
- Emma
- Martin Eden
- Sons and Lovers
- Strait is the Gate
- The Red and the Black
- The Sorrows of Young Werther
- A Doll’s House
Anthropology
Philosophy
Criticism
Strait is the Gate
ALISSA’S JOURNAL
I used to like learning the piano, because it seemed to me that I was able to make some progress in it every day. That too, perhaps, is the secret of the pleasure I take reading a book in a foreign language; not, indeed, that I prefer any other language whatever to our own, or that the writers I admire in it appear to me in any way inferior to those of other countries — but the slight difficulty that lies in the pursuit of their meaning and feeling, the uncouscious pride of overcoming this difficulty, and of overcoming it more and more successfully, adds to my intellectual pleasure a certain spiritual contentment, which it seems to me I cannot do without.
However blessed it might be, I cannot desire a state without progress. I imagine heavenly joy, not as a confounding of the spirit with God, but as an infinite, a perpetual drawing near to Him… and if I were not afraid of playing upon words I should say that I did not care for any joy that was not progressive.
**
This morning we were sitting on the bench in the avenue; we were not talking, and did not feel any need to talk… Suddenly he asked me if I believed in a future life.
“Oh! Jérôme!” I cried at once, “it is more than hope I have; it is certainty.”
And it seemed to me, on a sudden, that my whole faith had, as it were, been poured into the exclamation.
“I should like to know,” he added. He stopped a few moments; then: “Would you act differently without your faith?”
“How can I tell?” I answered; and I added: “And you, my dear, you yourself, and in spite of yourself, can no longer act otherwise than as if you were inspired by the liveliest faith And I should not love you if you were different.”
No, Jérôme, no, it is not after a future recompense that our virtue is striving; it is not for recompense that our love is seeking. A generous soul is hurt by the idea of being rewarded for its efforts; nor does it consider virtue an adornmen: no, virtue is the form of its beauty.
The Red and the Black
Edited and Translated with Notes by CATHERINE SLATER | OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
BOOK ONE CHAPTER 24: A capital city
Her barmaid’s imagination supplying her with lies in plenty.
BOOK TWO CHAPTER 2: Entry into society
Ridiculous and touching memory: the salon where one made one’s first appearance at eighteen, alone and without patronage! A woman’s glance was enough to intimidate me. The harder I tried to please, the more awkward I became. I got quite the wrong ideas about everything; either I was confiding with no justification; or I saw a man as an enemy because he had looked at me gravely. But at that time, in the midst of the terrible misfourtunes caused by my shyness, how really fine a fine day was!
Juline stood dumbfounded in the middle of the courtyard.
“Do try to look as if you had your wits about you,” said Father Pirard; “you have these horrible ideas, and then you act just like a child! What’s happened to Horace’s nil mirari?” (Never show any enthusiasm.) Just think that this tribe of lackeys, on seeing you established here, will try to make fun of you; they will see in you an equal who has been unjustly put above them. Beneath outward appearances of good nature, kind advice, and a desire to guide you, they will try to get you to put your foot in it in a big way.”
BOOK TWO CHAPTER 8: What decoration distinguishes a man?
Associated with high birth and a great deal of wealth, genius isn’t a mark of ridicule, and in that case what a distinction!
BOOK TWO Chapter 14: A young lady’s thoughts
She couldn’t abide lack of character, it was her only objection to the handsome young men who surround her. The more they graciously mocked everything from fashion, or which fails to follow it properly while thinking it does so, the more they damned themselves in her eyes.
BOOK TWO Chapter 19: The Opera Bouffe
She would look at Julien and find delightful charm in his most trivial actions.
“Punish me for my appalling pride,” she said to him, hugging him in her arms till he could hardly breathe. “You’re my master, I’m your slave, I must ask your pardon on my knees for having tried to rebel.” She slipped out of his arms to fall at his feet. “Yes, you’re my master,” she said to him, still intoxicated with happiness and love. “Reign over me for ever, punish your slave severely when she tries to rebel.”
A Doll’s House
Act II
I am the most wretched of all my patients,
在我的病人里头，我自己的病最严重。