34 Quotes by Gabriel Chevallier

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.

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

In a small community sex constitutes the most accessible and least extravagant pastime of all, rustic love being rarely mercenary.

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.

Alas, God's poor ministers are just as much in the dark as we are. You must believe like old women believe, the ones that look like witches, who mumble to themselves in churches under the nose of cheap, plaster saints. As soon as you start to use your reason, to look for a rainbow, you always run up against the great excuse, mystery. You will be advised to light some candles, put coins in the box, say a few rosaries, and make yourself stupid.

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.

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.

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.

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