Effi Briest Quotes
"Readers who do not wish to learn details of the plot will prefer to treat the Introduction as an Afterword."
"His ancestors were Huguenots, Protestants from Nîmes, who fled from France after Louis XIV denied them toleration by revoking the Edict of Nantes in 1685."
"From April to September 1852 he was in London as a correspondent for a Berlin paper, and from 1855 to 1859 he was there as an official correspondent for the government."
"His residence in Britain gave rise to two travel books, From England and Beyond the Tweed."
"Fontane’s novels are most often set in late nineteenth-century Berlin."
"For the greater part of his life, however, Fontane was a citizen not of Germany but of Prussia."
"The ruler of Brandenburg was one of the seven potentates who could vote on candidates for the office of Holy Roman Emperor."
"Innstetten’s inner unease is manifested in his strange fascination with the supernatural."
"Effi is a fresh, lively, imaginative, playful, spontaneous person, thrust into a situation she can hardly cope with."
"A marriage cannot end, for example, without some effect on the children."
"Despite occasional reservations, Fontane admired contemporary realist and Naturalist writers, notably Henrik Ibsen, Émile Zola, and Gerhart Hauptmann."
"It is important to remember and appreciate the solid, material reality of the world that Fontane creates."
"At the same time, Fontane is realistic in not overestimating how much he, or we, can know about other people."
"The presence of Effi’s child at a climactic moment of her story testifies to Fontane’s realism."
"Only in the one there were three wicker chairs with the seats worn through, and a little picture, half the length of a finger, had been stuck on the arm of one; it represented a Chinaman, in a blue coat with baggy yellow pantaloons and a flat hat on his head."
"The shark and the crocodile might have been easy to understand, but that upper chamber, what was there?"
"How you pamper me, poor little thing that I am."
"Effi, you're a delightful, darling creature. You've no idea how much I think that, and how I'd like to show you all the time that I think that."
"You must remember from our journey that I never kept you waiting in the morning."
"I'm all for life. On the way here you told me all sorts of strange things about the town and the countryside."
"I'm a Briest. And my father, it must have been more than a hundred times he's said to me, Effi (that's what I'm called), Effi, this is where it is, here."
"You can never get over looking so ridiculous."
"What I actually long for is peace and quiet."
"You mustn’t abandon your faith, you should do everything you’re supposed to."
"There’s nothing more calming than that kind of book."
"You always have to fit in where you happen to be put."
"I’m sure it will be all right; I’m a respectable woman and I have good testimonials."
"God, it’s a long time since I’ve had something like that."
"But I’m not going to; I’m going to stay sitting here until I die."
"He’s probably right with that expression but I’d rather he didn’t use it."
"To conquer yourself in faith, that's the important thing, that's the true victory."
"And when you've got yourself pinned down and almost feel like crying because it hurts so much, then the angels above rejoice."
"The more difficult, the better. You should be happy about that."
"What's important, my dear young lady, is the fight you put up."
"You can't legislate for thoughts and wishes."
"I feel I can hear the dancing upstairs. Strange that it keeps coming back."
"It's so difficult to see into a person's heart."
"There's a reproach behind it and I suspect I know why."
"But just look there, he really is going to dance with Grete Stojentin. He’s actually too old for her, at least in his mid-forties."
"So she just drifted on, at first because she couldn’t change things, then because she didn’t want to change them."
"Only in one thing did she stay true to herself: she saw everything clearly and didn’t try to gloss over anything."
"What’s wrong with that, Geert? That’s not much, Geert. But I almost feel like saying that I couldn’t even have lived with him."
"I think there are some days when we don’t even see six people. Just the dunes and the sea beyond them."
"I’m going away too," he said after a while, "to Berlin, even. Perhaps then, like Crampas, I can bring back something new."
"And now, with God’s aid, a new life. Things are going to be different."
"But swimming against the tide isn’t her strong point."
"I can’t rid myself of it. And what the worst thing about it is, what makes me doubt myself …"
"What does weigh down on me is something else—fear, mortal fear, and the constant dread that it will eventually come out after all."
"I’m ashamed of myself. But just as I don’t feel true remorse, I don’t feel true shame."
"I’m tormented by fear and shame at my deception."
"But shame at my guilt, that’s something I don’t feel, or not real shame, or not enough."
"If you’re so afraid of your father, as I was, then you’re not really that much afraid of God."
"There are so many lives that aren’t real lives and so many marriages that aren’t real marriages."
"But it’s our anniversary, so you’ll have to make allowances for me."