“There are no such things as principles; there are only events, and there are no laws but those of expediency: a man of talent accepts events and the circumstances in which he finds himself, and turns everything to his own ends.”
(Vautrin)
#BalzacTogether
Father Goriot
Then through what seemed to him the pollution of triumph, he was led into the library; and he noticed, notwithstanding the presiding busts of Shakespeare and Milton, that there was but one wretched stand full of books in the room, and that in the gloom of a far corner.
#GeorgeMoore #AMereAccident
"Man's an imperfect creature. He gets either more or less hypocritical, depending... And I don't think common people are any better than rich ones: human beings are the same no matter where you find them." Vautrin is cynicism incarnate. Not without reason. #balzactogether
#SundaySentence
Images rose up around her — detailed, familiar still lifes she’d kept in deep storage for twenty years or longer, now back in vengeful retrospective.
(The art-obsessed narrator remembers a teen struggle with mental illness)
Richard Powers
Plowing the Dark
“I have read Benvenuto Cellini's Memoirs, such as you see me; and, what is more, in Italian: A fine-spirited fellow he was! From him I learned to follow the example set us by Providence, who strikes us down at random, and to admire the beautiful whenever and wherever it is found.”
#BalzacTogether
#BalzacTogether
„Avec ce capital noir, en dix ans j'aurai trois ou quatre millions. Si je réussis, personne ne me demandera: qui es-tu? Je serai M. Quatre-Millions, citoyen des Etats-Unis.“
[Vautrin]
LE PÈRE GORIOT
#AsYou2026
II,1,30ff
William Shakespeare
As You Like It
Arden 1975
FIRST LORD
Did steal behind him as he lay along
Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood,
