Eugénie Grandet Quotes
"Life and movement are so stagnant there that a stranger might think them uninhabited, were it not that he encounters suddenly the pale, cold glance of a motionless person."
"Houses three centuries old are still solid, though built of wood, and their divers aspects add to the originality which commends this portion of Saumur to the attention of artists and antiquaries."
"Farther on are doors studded with enormous nails, where the genius of our forefathers has traced domestic hieroglyphics, of which the meaning is now lost forever."
"These low rooms, which have no shop-frontage, no show-windows, in fact no glass at all, are deep and dark and without interior or exterior decoration."
"A perpetual duel goes on between the heavens and their terrestrial interests."
"A housewife cannot buy a partridge without the neighbors asking the husband if it were cooked to a turn."
"Life is almost wholly in the open air; every household sits at its own threshold, breakfasts, dines, and quarrels there."
"He was appointed a member of the administration of Saumur, and his pacific influence made itself felt politically and commercially."
"This cruel pity, recalling, as it did, a thousand pleasures to the heart of the old cooper, was for Nanon the sum total of happiness."
"I must leave you; I have got to see about the Dutchmen who are going away to-day. And then I must find Cruchot, and talk with him about all this."
"Come, Nanon, if Nanon you are, hold your tongue; let me go to bed. I’ll arrange my things to-morrow."
"What in the world have I come here for?" thought Charles as he went to sleep.
"Blessed Virgin! how charming he is, my cousin!" Eugenie was saying, interrupting her prayers, which that night at least were never finished.
"Holy Virgin! what a beautiful altar-cloth it would make for the parish church! My dear darling monsieur, give it to the church, and you’ll save your soul; if you don’t, you’ll lose it."
"I am too good a Christian not to give it to you when I go away, and you can do what you like with it."
"I shall have that golden robe," thought Nanon, who went to sleep dreaming for the first time in her life of flowers, embroidery, and damask, just as Eugenie was dreaming of love.
"If light is the first love of life, is not love a light to the heart?"
"I am not beautiful enough for him!" Such was Eugenie’s thought,—a humble thought, fertile in suffering.
"I knew it," said the old wine-grower to the notary.
"Poor indeed!" said Grandet; "he isn’t worth a sou!"
"I never get up till then. However, I fared so badly on the journey that I am glad to eat something at once."
"Your cousin is a darling, a darling! oh, that he is! You should have seen him in his dressing-gown, all silk and gold! I saw him, I did! He wears linen as fine as the surplice of monsieur le cure."
"My father will decide that," answered Madame Grandet.
"Do you always live here?" said Charles, thinking the room uglier by daylight than it had seemed the night before.
"All right!" thought Grandet, "make haste and come to the point!"
"Plague take him! I am no longer Monsieur de Bonfons," thought the magistrate ruefully, his face assuming the expression of a judge bored by an argument.
"It is part of the French nature to grow enthusiastic, or angry, or fervent about some meteor of the moment."
"Police regulations don’t allow nocturnal racket."
"The scene was lighted by a single candle placed between two rails of the staircase."
"My father will not be home till dinner-time."
"Serpent! Cursed girl! Ah, deceitful creature!"
"I have never thought of the miseries of poverty."
"Why do we have children? Ah! my wife, I love her!"
"How can you think of receiving the God of mercy in your house when you refuse to forgive your daughter?"
"Father, in the name of all the saints and the Virgin! in the name of Christ who died upon the cross! do not touch that! It is neither yours nor mine."
"My good wife, you are getting well, are not you?"
"My child, there is no happiness except in heaven; you will know it some day."
"I have not earned two millions by the sweat of my brow to fling them at the head of my father’s creditors."
"Take back your money, father; we ask for nothing but your affection."
"He is laughing at me, the old cockatoo! I’d like to put six inches of iron into him!"