Max O'Rell

“ In France, irony is presented in a more lively form. Swift and Sterne are the acknowledged masters of British humor, as Rabelais and Voltaire are the personification of French wit.
British humor does not evaporate so quickly as French wit; you feel its influence longer. The latter takes you by storm, but humor lightly tickles you under the ribs, and quietly takes possession of you by degrees; the bright idea, instead of being laid bare, is subtly hidden; it is only after you have peeled off the coating of sarcasm lying on the surface, that you get at the fun underneath. ”

“ The scream of the young ladies of Miss Tomkins' Seminary, on hearing that "a man is behind the door!" is nothing, compared to the magic cry, "Une fille!" in a French school.
Is not the object of man's worship always something unknown, extraordinary, ideal? Is it not always clothed in mystery? Have we ever bestowed unlimited admiration upon those whose society we frequent every day? Habit kills admiration, [2] as it kills all sentiments that live upon illusions. If, from our childhood, woman were the companion of our daily games and walks, should we not look upon her with different eyes? ”

“ In England, social disparity excites no jealousy. On the contrary, the noble and the wealthy are popular.
In France, we have given up admitting superiority since our walls have been ornamented with the announcement that all Frenchmen are brethren, free men, and equals. This rage for equality degenerates into jealousy of all superiority. In fact, the French are all equal to their superiors, and most of them superior to their equals. As soon as superiority clearly manifests itself, in political life, in literature, in the fine arts, anywhere, it is ostracized. ”

“ To the English who say that there is no religion in France, I would reply: Our churches are not, like yours, full only from eleven to half-past twelve; they are thronged from six o'clock in the morning to one in the afternoon by a crowd whose fervor is second to that of no other church-goers, and this French piety is all the more admirable because, in our country, religion is not an indispensable garment, as it is in England. ”

“ It almost seems to me that a child gives proof of courage in submitting to a punishment which he knows he has deserved, and that a spirit of submission to discipline is more to be commended in him than a spirit of rebellion. In resigning himself to his fate, and enduring his punishment, the English schoolboy learns to master a passion; the French schoolboy, in rebelling, allows a passion to master him. If the English system is bad, the French one must be worse. ”

“ Lord Beaconsfield pronounced patriotism to be the most rational form of egotism. Would to Heaven it might be so interpreted in France!
When shall we, in France, cease to strive after the extraordinary and the universal? When shall we cease to concern ourselves about the happiness of the whole human race and, minding our own business, undertake only the possible and the practical? When shall we cease to become inventors and be men of business?
There is not much discovered in England nowadays, except new ways of dodging the arch-enemy. ”

“ There was no England when we were the terror of Rome. There was no England when our brave and generous ancestors went to battle to deliver or avenge an oppressed nation, or welcomed a poor stranger as a friend sent by the gods. There was no England when Vercingetorix made Cæsar tremble, nor was there yet an England when, eight hundred years later, the exploits of Roland were inspiring the poets of the whole of old Europe. ”

“ Yes, the foreigner ought to be able to read, as in an open book, that good, warm-hearted, France that he hardly looks at. For him, France is Paris; Paris that supplies him with pleasures for a fortnight, and that he despises when he is satiated. The real France, peaceful and laborious, he knows nothing about beyond what he has seen of it from the windows of a railroad car. ”

“ A nation does not learn the proper use of freedom in a day. It does not understand at first sight that obedience and respect for the law are two virtues indispensable to everyone [Pg 202] who wishes to get on tolerably under a democracy; it is for the Government to teach it its lesson. To do this properly, an authority is wanted which shall be vigilant, while making itself felt as little as possible.
This liberty should be the monopoly of no one, but the privilege of each and all. ”

“ If from one cause or another the family revenue diminishes, she knows it as soon as her husband; with her economy and good management, she faces the danger; with her energy, she wards off ruin from her threshold. In important matters, as well as in the smallest, she has both a consultative and deliberative voice. Content with her supremacy in the home circle, she asks for no other rights; politics are not in her line. And yet a French woman is far from lacking patriotism. ”

“ At first sight, the theory of government in England appears to be most simple; two great political parties, each having its leader, whose authority is uncontested, and who takes office amid the acclamations of half the nation. Is the country threatened with danger, party spirit vanishes, Liberals and Conservatives disappear; the Englishman is supreme.
All this appears as simple as admirable. I will show farther on, however, that if there is fixity in the form of the government, there cannot be any consistency in the politics of the country. ”

“ With us, jealousy is not only the stamp of mediocrity, as it is everywhere else; it is a malady that our greatest men have been tainted with. The acrimonious and contemptible polemic that Bossuet and Fénelon engaged in, the implacable hatred of Voltaire toward Rousseau, are but two instances of it; the history of French literature abounds with others. Our Parisian newspapers are daily filled with polemics and personalities.
In England, everyone minds his own business, and does not trouble himself about what his neighbor says or does. ”

“ The various religions in existence were founded by men of different nations to suit their own character.
The French, impressionable and fond of pompous pageants, adopted a mystical religion, which addresses itself to their senses; the English, cool and argumentative, preferred a religion which addresses itself to their reason. This is why churches in France savor of the theater, and churches in England savor of the lecture-room. ”

“ Humor is a subtle, witty, philosophical, and greatly satirical form of gayety, the outcome of simplicity in the character, that is met chiefly among English-speaking people.
Humor has not the brilliancy, the vivacity of French wit, but it is more graceful, lighter, and above all more philosophic. A sarcastic element is nearly always present in it, and not unfrequently a vein of sadness. There is something deliciously quiet and deliberate about humor, that is in perfect harmony with the English character ”

“ Joseph rarely renounces his bachelor's life before the age of thirty.
When he marries, woman is not exactly an enigma to him; but do you think he is any the worse husband for that? Not he. The purity of his wife becomes an object of worship for him; he recognizes in her a moral being so superior to himself that he soon abdicates all his prerogatives in her favor; and he consoles himself for the authority that he rarely knows how to maintain in his home, with the thought that the administration of his affairs is in safe hands. ”

“ How is it that the French are such vandals with regard to their country and their institutions, seeing that the love for their family, respect for their parents, and veneration for souvenirs, are such marked features in their character? The fact is that France is towed unresistingly by Paris, and that we often have to say "the French," when in reality we only mean "the Parisians." ”

“ Who would dare to compare the greater number of England's conquests to those sterile ones that only survive in man's memory by the tears and blood that they have caused to flow? [Pg 160]
"We are a wonderful people," cries General Gordon, in his Diary at Khartoum; "it was never our Government which made us a great nation; our Government has ever been the drag on our wheels. England was made by adventurers, not by her Government; and I believe she will only hold her place by adventurers." ”

“ Oh! my good peasant folk of France, you are the fortune of your country, and you also, with your rustic simplicity, are its generous heart. It is among you that tired human nature drinks deep draughts of pure life-giving air, and forgets the struggles of the city, its noisy pleasures, its ephemeral joys, its jealousies and burning hatreds ”

“ Worshiping his old monarchy, devoted to his old institutions, but ravenous for justice and liberty, he would be ready again to-day to demolish both monarchy and constitution, as he did in the seventeenth century, if his liberty ran the least danger. In politics, possessing the virtues that are indispensable to the prosperity of a nation—respect of the law and respect of power clearly manifested—he always bows to the decision of a majority. ”

“ If England, who only dates from the eleventh century, lives on her souvenirs and turns to them for inspiration, with what souvenirs might we inspire ourselves—we who have been a nation for twenty-three centuries? ”

“ Yet this thirst for gold has been the greatest civilizing power of modern times. It is this which has opened up new markets for commerce in the remotest corners of the world. This British Empire, which has been called a brazen colossus with feet of clay, is the greatest empire it was ever given to man to found.
In a hundred years' time, Australia will probably be a strong and independent Republic, a second America; but the separation will mean no loss of prestige or of profit to England; her commerce will not suffer ”

“ The Englishman is the stanchest monarchist, and at the same time the freest man in the world, which proves that freedom is compatible with a monarchial government. There is no French Legitimist more royalist than he, there is no French Republican more passionately fond of liberty; nay, I will go so far as to say that, in France, people would be treated as dangerous demagogues, who demanded certain liberties which the English have long possessed under a monarchy, and to defend which the most conservative of them would allow himself to be rent in pieces. ”

“ Among a free people, intellect alone ought to be admitted into the councils of the nation.
No one could have a word to say against such men as the Duke of Argyll and the Marquis of Salisbury having a vote to cast into the scales of England's destinies; but would not these able members of the aristocracy of birth gain in influence and prestige, if they sat in an elected house, side by side with the aristocracy of talent?
Perhaps they may think so themselves. [Pg 230]
The House of Lords owes its existence to the English taste for antiquities or curiosities ”

“ Nature has made the Englishman a Puritan. Churchman or not, stir him up, and it is the Puritan which rises to the surface. The day on which the Church of England is disestablished, England will be all Puritan. ”

“ In England, the landlord can only demand his rent twenty-one days after it is due, and bills are only presented after three days' grace. His commerce is hindered by his exaggerated attention to trifles, but when he sells you a pair of boots, you can put them on, and walk in them.
He is jealous of his reputation, and a compliment paid to the quality of his merchandise gives him as much pleasure as the profit he gets out of it.
I do not hesitate to affirm that not only does the small French bourgeois not covet wealth, but that he is almost afraid of it. ”

“ A worshiper of grace and beauty, the Frenchman has given to woman a place which she occupies in no other nation.
Since the days when Aspasia inspired Socrates and advised Pericles, in no other country has woman's sovereignty been so supreme as it has always been, and still is, in France.
The Frenchman is keenly alive to woman's influence, and woman is an ever-present, a fixed, idea with him. Whether he study her from the artistic, physiological, or psychological point of view, his interest in her is never exhausted. ”

“ The English hypocrite is the hypocrite of virtue and religion. English novelists have exposed him, but have not succeeded in extinguishing him; the Chadbands, the Stigginses, the Podsnaps, the Pecksniffs, all the saintly British Tartuffes, are as flourishing as ever. ”

“ Such harmless trivialities—for trivialities they must be called—are indulged in by men who are the honor and joy of their homes.
Let me tell you this: Whenever you hear a Frenchman speak ill of himself, do not believe him, he is merely boasting. Be sure that nothing is more true. I shall never say anything more true so long as I live.
We French hide our virtues and do not like to be reproached with them. ”

“ Nothing is more absurd in the eyes of the English than this ever-present idea of woman in the mind of the Frenchman, and as our dear neighbors do not know us any better than if an ocean, instead of a silver streak, separated us and them, they indulge in a thousand and one commentaries upon the puerility of our character. ”

“ We French people have not the bump of veneration very much developed, it is true; but we have an admiration, approaching veneration, for talent and science, and the same Frenchman who takes no notice of a duke, will turn to get a second look at a great literary man or a savant. The commonplace Englishman, who humbles himself before a village squire, or a big banker, takes his revenge when he meets the schoolmaster who, in France, would be a professeur, but who, in England, were he a double first of Oxford, an ex-scholar of Balliol College, goes through life by the name of schoolmaster ”

“ We French people ought not to be a closed letter to the foreigner, for Heaven knows we make no attempt to hide our defects, and I might even add that if we did study to hide them, instead of boasting of them, we might cut quite as good and moral a figure as the most proper inhabitant of the British Isles or of the State of Maine.
We offer ourselves to criticism so unreserv [Pg 5] edly, owning our shortcomings with such frankness, such abandon, that it ill becomes our neighbors to find fault with us. Indeed, we are a nation that confesses with a gay candor that should disarm unkind criticism. ”