The Gambler Quotes
"What may seem a small sum to a Rothschild may seem a large sum to me, and it is not the fault of stakes or of winnings that everywhere men can be found winning, can be found depriving their fellows of something, just as they do at roulette."
"In short, the natural Frenchman is a conglomeration of commonplace, petty, everyday positiveness, so that he is the most tedious person in the world."
"I would rather live a wandering life in tents than bow the knee to a German idol."
"To justify yourself in the eyes of the Baron and Baroness will be impossible."
"I am a judicially competent person, a man of twenty-five years of age, a university graduate, a gentleman."
"I am not quite sure what was the matter with me—whether I was merely stupefied or whether I purposely broke loose and ran amok."
"One cannot arrest a man for brawling until he has brawled."
"I have long given up thinking about such things."
"Man is a despot by nature, and loves to torture."
"I lose all conceit when I am with you, and everything ceases to matter."
"I do not care," I replied, "seeing that I no longer belong to his household."
"Very well, then," he said, in a sterner and more arrogant tone.
"I understand," I replied. "So you were ordered to hand me the note only in the last resort, and if you could not otherwise appease me? Is it not so? Speak out, Monsieur de Griers."
"Yes, I think I do know more about it than you do," he assented.
"Enough! All this is empty chatter. You are talking the usual nonsense. I shall know quite well how to spend my time."
"Ah! A bird of passage, evidently. Besides, I can see that she has her shoes polished."
"Cette vieille est tombée en enfance," De Griers whispered to me.
"Yes, it is there that the influence lies before which everything in the world must bow!"
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"Never mind, though. Get the documents cashed."
"I am no accountant. Let us hurry away, hurry away."
"What a fool I am! What a silly old fool I am, to be sure!"
"You are a girl of sense, and I am sorry for you."
"What poor creatures these people are. How sorry I am for them, and for Grandmamma!"
"Good heavens! Then I suppose you will be off to Paris this morning?"
"See what care and taste can do with the most wretched of means!"
"To think clearly, or even to engage in any serious conversation, had now become impossible for him; he could only ejaculate after each word 'Hm!' and then nod his head in confirmation."
"You are good and clever, and my one regret is that you are also so wrongheaded. You will never be a rich man!"
"For instance, one may look upon Racine as a broken-down, hobbledehoy, perfumed individual—one may even be unable to read him; and I too may think him the same, as well as, in some respects, a subject for ridicule. Yet about him, Mr. Astley, there is a certain charm, and, above all things, he is a great poet—though one might like to deny it."
"Yes, taken by himself, the Frenchman is frequently a fool of fools and a villain of villains."
"Though I can remember you in the strong, ardent period of your life, I feel persuaded that you have now forgotten every better feeling of that period—that your present dreams and aspirations of subsistence do not rise above pair, impair rouge, noir, the twelve middle numbers, and so forth."
"You might even have been useful to your country, which needs men like you. Yet you remained here, and your life is now over."
"What could you say to me that I do not already know? Well, wherein lies my difficulty? It lies in the fact that by a single turn of a roulette wheel everything for me, has become changed."
"But no, no! Surely I am not such a fool as that? Yet why should I not rise from the dead? I should require at first but to go cautiously and patiently and the rest would follow."