Georges Clemenceau

“ Until the order of things changes, all that the weak can do is to cry out their protest, their vain appeal to universal justice, which, deaf, insensible, and paralyzed, sits in mute contemplation of the disorder composing the order of the world.
Man, the supreme arbiter of the destinies of his inferiors, has arrogated all rights. The child who lets a bird flutter at the end of a string only to jerk it to the ground when the poor creature finally thought itself free, lives in his own person the evolution from the frank cruelty of the savage to the decent hypocrisies of civilized barbarism. ”

“ Ever onward, the motor-car pursues its headlong way at a speed one longs to check. Often we stop to prolong the pleasure of a moment, but if one did not take care one might stop for ever. The pen is powerless to convey what, perhaps, the brush might reveal—the joy of life that swells to bursting the sap of every twig and leaf, every flower and fruit, from the humblest blade of grass to the loftiest extremity of the tallest trees, and renders so impressively active every organ of the vegetable world. ”

“ Never!" cried Daniel and Nathan in one voice, horror-stricken.
"I know, I know that you have no such intention. Like me, you are penetrated by the greatness of our race, and like me you stand in admiration before the miracles of destiny. By their holy books the Jews have conquered the West. Upon our thought the thought of our rulers has been modelled. That, you must know, is the fundamental reason for their reviling us; they are aware of having nothing but brutal force to help them, and of living upon our genius. Though vanquished, we are their masters. ”

“ Come out here, young men in shiny threadbare sleeves who make your way homewards nightly to the close dens around the Sacré Cœur; come and see these black coffee-planters—men, women, and children—living close to Nature on the outskirts of civilisation, and compare your own wretched quarters furnished by Dufayel on the "hire" system, that has cost you such anxious moments, with the blissful nudity of these cabins, and tell me where you see the worst form of slavery, here amongst the newly emancipated Africans or at home under your own roofs. ”

“ The other will say that he has had an unhappy love affair and needs distraction. For the most part, people will confess that they are trying to forget something—their wife, their children, their business. All seem tormented by the same desire for novelty. What they are seeking from men and monuments and places in foreign lands is something not yet seen, a fresh enjoyment, a virgin impression which shall draw them outside the circle of outworn sensations. It is something to rouse a happy wonder, and fulfil a hope of pleasure that always keeps ahead of any pleasure experienced. ”

“ Every one here understands French, reading and speaking it like the speaker himself, and showing by their gestures that no shade of meaning was lost on them. What better could one wish? By the grace of winged words the mind of France has flown across the ocean, and we may rejoice in the fact and found great hopes for the future on it. It is therefore with the greatest pleasure that I offer my heartfelt gratitude to this admirable audience for their constant kindliness and for the encouragement that I found in their remarkable idealism and determination. ”

“ For thirty years the marvel of seeing the veil of Isis slowly raised, and the world, bit by bit, taken to pieces and put together again, according to infallible laws, brought me the supreme delight of grasping the world by thought. When I had exhausted analysis and synthesis, I undertook to tell my discoveries, and such was my mastery of my subject that in ten years I wrote a volume of five hundred pages, in which, I can say it now, for I have burned it, was contained what, in incalculable centuries to come, will be considered the treasure of human knowledge. ”

“ He makes a picturesque enough figure in the monotonous expanse of earth and sky, where rancho or tree, beast or man, stand out in high relief against a background of glaring light. Without sign or syllable, his eyes fixed on the empty horizon, the man passes through the silence of infinite solitude, rising like a ghost from the nothingness of the horizon at one point [Pg 209] to sink again into nothingness at another. When riding in a troop, they talk together in low tones. There are none of those outbursts of fun that you might expect in a land of sunshine. ”

“ The necessity for attention, and the sustained effort, obliged them to be silent. But what a reaction of laughter and song when the wooden pitch forks came into play, stacking the straw! Noonday would see the ground strewn with harvesters taking their rest in the full glare of the sun, for the peasant fears the treacherous shade. Upon the stroke of a bell, the noisy concert of the flails would again fill the air on every side.
At evening there were dances, and there were songs, in which Flower o' the Wheat excelled. ”

“ At home this would appear strange, since we do not impose the spectacle of our private intimacies upon the public. Yet may not this very air of detachment upon which we insist lead, both in public and in private, to some of the tragedies of life? Is it wrong for a married couple to love each other? And when two hearts are united in this way how can a feeling so powerful fail at times to betray itself by some outward manifestation? Let us take heed lest, in laughing at others, we denounce ourselves. ”

“ Is any one surprised at heat in summer and cold in winter? We must accept things as they come, and if nothing comes, still be content, since we cannot change the actual course of things. It is the same resignation as that of beasts under the whip. Six Cents' wife with a sack on her back goes from door to door begging for a crust or a few potatoes, grudgingly given to her. The sawyer does such small odd jobs as he finds to do. They keep alive, and at times appear contented. Seated on a stone at the threshold of his hut, Six Cents watches the world go by. The young come, merry, wilful, noisy. ”

“ In the crackling of the burning palms, in the whirling clouds of blinding smoke furrowed with a sinister glow, boughs and branches lay heaped up on the ground in immense flaming piles, through which the charred stumps of boles, brought low by fire, crashed noisily to earth, where their corpses lay and slowly smouldered to ashes on the morrow's coffee plantation in accordance with the law of Nature, which builds fresh forms of life out of the decomposed elements of death. ”

“ The walk from Pouzauges to Mortagne following the ridge of the hills of the Woodland is one of the most picturesque in our lovely western France, so rich in beautiful landscapes. Very pleasant are its valleys, watered by crystalline brooks flowing musically over pebbly beds; they are everywhere intersected by hedges behind which in serried ranks rise shady thickets, inviolate sanctuary of rural peace. There might the peasant be born and die with never the least knowledge of the outer world. ”

“ While the physiognomy of the streets of Buenos Ayres is wholly European in symmetry, style, and even in the expression of the faces to be seen thereon, yet this people is Argentine to the very marrow of the bones—exclusively and entirely Argentine. New York is nearer to Europe, and New York is North American in essence as completely as Buenos Ayres is Argentine. The difference is that in New York, and even in Boston or Chicago, North Americanism is patent to all eyes in type, in carriage, and in voice, as much as in feeling and manner of thinking ”

“ To-day I will go and purchase a ticket for the imperial lottery, the grand prize of which is five hundred thousand florins, and to-morrow, bowed beneath the veil, in the temple of the Lord, I shall promise to give him, if I win——"
"Ten thousand florins!" Ochosias bravely proposed.
"Ten thousand grains of sand!" cried Simon, son of Simon. "Would you be stingy toward your Creator? Ten thousand florins! Do you think that in the world we live in one can subsidize a Divinity, a first-class one, for that price? Triple donkey! Know that I shall offer Jehovah one hundred thousand florins! ”

“ The tree is no longer a tree: it is a Laocoön twisted in a fury of rage beneath the onslaught of an ocean of lives whose torrents recognise no barriers. Whichever way one looks, hairy monsters are agonising in despairing contortions, victims of a drama of dumb violence; and the spectacle conveys a keen realisation of the eternal struggle for life that is going on all around us, from the summits of these verdant heights to the subterranean depths whence issues this living force. ”

“ But if we succeed in deceiving others, it is harder in good faith to delude ourselves. Whereas, from a height, through the blurred glass of faith, the little white light, beyond the edge of the visible world, by which we are enabled sincerely to see what we do not see brings us the surest realization of human hope.
And, kind readers, if any one of you ever has any doubts, even though you sit in your armchair at home, follow the advice of the guide on the Venetian lagoon: "Half close your eyes——" and you will see Giambolo. ”

“ But, alas! the task of appropriation is not accomplished without encountering some obstacles, and the would-be mountain climber is forced to concentrate his attention on one spot of the planet that holds him in the grip of an irresistible attraction. A funicular railway performs this office for him; and with no more trouble than that of letting yourself be drawn up under the branches, you suddenly emerge on a height whence you get a magic vision of Rio, with her bay, her islets, and a mass of mountains heaped one upon the other, until they are finally swallowed up in the sea. ”

“ When the priest, coming before the altar, met the shock of the sardonic joy twisting the lips of the hunchbacked Mother and her three acolytes in the charity of the Lord, he fell a step backward, as if mocked by Satan himself. Pale, shaken, he was unable to restrain the trembling of his lips. The thunderbolt had struck. In the anguish of death he retained the appearance of life, and must play the part of a living man. ”

“ Thus, beside the small aristocracy formed of the last vestiges of the original Spanish colony, I had the pleasure and honour of finding a large public of European culture and wide intelligence, eager to hear what any European might have to say about an idea whose course he was honestly seeking to trace, whether bearing on the political and social experiences of Europe or on the more or less rational experiments of which their own land is the theatre. Their unbiassed criticism and independent opinions are all one could hope to find in an audience one is trying to influence. ”

“ How often, in the days of my youth, have I accompanied the redoubtable Janière on his Sunday expeditions, when he would ostensibly leave the village by the highroad, his hands in his pockets, then dash into the fields, and miraculously find his gun hidden in a bush, a few feet from a rabbit hole. Nor man nor beast was ever known to get the better of him. He was an old Chouan of 1815 who, having been a poacher all his days, and a marauder now and then, died without ever having had a writ served on him. ”

“ As I want to be wholly sincere here, I must admit that the French take this Argentine contagion with remarkable facility. I should grievously wrong our own excellent colony, however, if I did less than justice to its ardent patriotism. It is only when tried that love grows and grows purer. In absence the fatherland seems the dearer in proportion as it is connected with the recollection of sufferings that left us stripped of all but honour.
The public work of the French colony speaks loudly for it. ”

“ Things had gone on like this for more than thirty years, when Aunt Rosalie was carried off in two days by an inflammation of the lungs. Victorine, in stupefaction, watched her die, thinking of the inheritance which had not come, but which could not have failed to come eventually, if only the old Aunt had continued to live. When the dead woman was cold, Victorine, who was alone with her in the middle of night, ran to the box of documents, muttering over and over, in an access of positive madness: "No one will get anything, no one will get anything!" ”

“ There is only one point that it is only just to repeat: it is that the women of Uruguay are very beautiful. More or less so than the Argentinos? In the Pan-American Congress the ladies of Buenos Ayres gave the palm to a celebrated beauty of Montevideo, in an outburst of hospitable chivalry. I would not have the bad taste to say a word either way. The two banks of La Plata appear to me equally propitious for the development of feminine æsthetics, and for the foreigner who loves art the handsomest model is ever that which is before his eyes. ”

“ Jean Piot, after his enormous share of work, exacted remuneration from Providence, in the shape of joys.
In his youth, labour and joy went hand in hand. If the pay was not large in spite of the excellence of the work, neither, on the other hand, is the expense large, when a kiss only asks for a kiss in return, when the soup of beans, cabbage, potatoes, and the bacon to go with it, are plentiful, when the white wine demanded by the labourer with sweat on his brow is grudged him by no one. ”

“ I have shown you the Pampas alive with the swarms of their new civilisation. We are far enough from the romantic descriptions so dear to story-tellers. We all know now that the redskin of North America bears no resemblance to the portraits painted of him by Chateaubriand or Fenimore Cooper. The Pampas, in full process of evolution, are getting more human and losing their distinctive features. They were once as bare, to quote the joke of a poet, now a member of the Académie Française, "as the speech of an academician"; man has undertaken to raise up orchards, groves, and even forests. ”

“ At least, I like to think so, for if the shoemaker had replaced Mignon by another bullfinch, or if Mignon had found it in his heart to dance the polka for Brossard, the nailer, who used to make such a racket on the other side of the street, I should lose a supreme illusion concerning the heart of man and bird. If we lose our faith in man, whom experience may lead us to suspect of selfishness, let us retain our respectful esteem for animals. ”

“ But for no inducement would they leave their dressing-rooms until the sun has gone down to the horizon. When you have once seen the heart of the forest wilderness, where the same luxuriant life in manifold manifestations is to be seen at your feet and in the high tree and hilltops, where profusely flowering creepers wind themselves around every twig and bough, placing these forest kings in tender bondage, you will not blame the monkeys for being content to remain in their sumptuous domain. I was shown fruit half eaten, the refuse of a monkeys' restaurant. ”

“ Gold for the sake of gold, not for the vain pleasures, the empty shells, for which fools give it in exchange. Gold was beautiful, gold was mighty, gold was sovereign of the world. If Simon, son of Simon, had attempted to picture Jehovah, he would have conceived of him as gold stretching out to infinity, filling all space! Meanwhile, he trailed shocking old slippers through the mud of his Galician village, and arrayed himself in a greasy, ragged garment on which the far-spaced clean places stood out like spots. ”

“ Perhaps in January—that is, in the height of the summer—these explorers had like us the excuse of a fog, for tropical vegetation is only possible when there are alternations of rain and sunshine such as the climate of Rio abundantly supplies. It is the rarest of phenomena to see the horizon perfectly clear. The distance is invariably wreathed with a light haze which softens the violence of the colours. ”