French Poets and Novelists |
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Common terms and phrases
actor admirable agreeable Alexandre Dumas Alfred de Musset Ampère André-Marie Ampère artist Balzac Baudelaire beautiful believe Boufflers brilliant called character Charles de Bernard charming clever Comédie Française Comédie Humaine drama entertaining Eugénie Grandet everything fancy feel figures Flaubert France French Gautier genius George Sand give grace hand happy heroine Herr Lindau human husband imagination immense intellectual Jean-Jacques Ampère lady Le Père Goriot less letters light literary live look lover Madame Bovary Madame de Sabran Madame Récamier Madame Sand Mademoiselle mind Molière moral mother nature never novelist novels Paris passion Paul de Musset Père Goriot perhaps philosophic picturesque play poet portrait reader romancer Sainte-Beuve Sand's Sarah Bernhardt Sarcey seems sense sentiment sort speak story striking talent talk Théâtre Français Théophile Gautier things tion Turgénieff verses volume wife woman women write young
Popular passages
Page 33 - Les plus désespérés sont les chants les plus beaux, Et j'en sais d'immortels qui sont de purs sanglots.
Page 309 - The great question as to a poet or a novelist is, How does he feel about life? what, in the last analysis, is his philosophy? When vigorous writers have reached maturity, we are at liberty to gather from their works some expression of a total view of the world they have been so actively observing. This is the most interesting thing their works offer us. Details are interesting in proportion as they contribute to make it clear.
Page 346 - Try to appreciate the excellences of others than the first love, remembering that ' ' there are as good fish in the sea as ever were caught...
Page 76 - Mystery," it seems to us that to take him with more than a certain degree of seriousness is to lack seriousness one's self. An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection.
Page 43 - The author's manner is so light and^ true, so really creative, his fancy so alert, his taste so happy, his humour so genial, that he makes illusion almost as contagious as laughter...
Page 318 - Life is, in fact, a battle. On this point optimists and pessimists agree. Evil is insolent and strong ; beauty enchanting but rare ; goodness very apt to be weak ; folly very apt to be defiant ; wickedness to carry the day ; imbeciles to be in great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally, unhappy.
Page 95 - In listening to these people I could espouse their life. I felt their rags upon my back; I walked with my feet in their tattered shoes; their desires, their wants — everything passed into my soul, and my soul passed into theirs; it was the dream of a waking man.
Page 317 - Toe . . . toe . . . toe, all seem to us to be gloomier by several shades than they need have been; for we hold to the good old belief that the presumption, in life, is in favor of the brighter side, and we deem it, in art, an "indispensable condition of our interest in a depressed observer that he should have at least tried his best to be cheerful. The truth, we take it, lies for the pathetic in poetry and romance very much where it lies for the "immoral.
Page 31 - Non, Alphonse, jamais. La triste expérience Nous apporte la cendre et n'éteint pas le feu. Tu respectes le mal fait par la Providence, Tu le laisses passer et tu crois à ton Dieu. Quel qu'il soit, c'est le mien; il n'est pas deux croyances. Je ne sais pas son nom; j'ai regardé les cieux; Je sais qu'ils sont à lui, je sais qu'ils sont immenses, Et que l'immensité ne peut pas être à deux.
Page 150 - Comedie Humaine" would be a perfectly adequate substitute for them. M. Taine says of him very happily that, after Shakespeare, he is our great magazine of documents on human nature. When Shakespeare is suggested we feel rather his differences from Shakespeare — feel how Shakespeare's characters stand out in the open air of the universe, while Balzac's are enclosed in a peculiar artificial atmosphere, musty in quality and limited in amount, which persuades itself with a sublime sincerity that it...