Gabriel Chevallier Quotes & Sayings

Here everything is planned for killing. The ground is ready to receive us, the bullets are ready to hit us, the spots where the shells will explode are fixed in time and space, just like the paths of our destiny which will inevitably lead us to them. And yet we want to stay alive and we use all our mental strength to silence the voice of reason. We are well aware that death does not immortalise a human being in the memories of the living, it simply cancels him out. — Gabriel Chevallier

So, in order to be courageous, I now have a fairly simple means at my disposal: to accept death. — Gabriel Chevallier

Men were snoring, twitching and whimpering, struggling with nightmares less terrible than reality. — Gabriel Chevallier

Enter Justine Putet, of whom it is now time to speak. Imagine a swarthy-looking, ill-tempered person, dried-up and of viperish disposition, with a bad complexion, an evil expression, a cruel tongue, defective internal economy, and (over all this) a layer of aggressive piety and loathsome suavity of speech. A paragon of virtue of a kind that filled you with dismay, for virtue in such a guise as this is detestable to behold, and in this instance it seemed to be inspired by a spirit of hatred and vengeance rather than by ordinary feelings of kindness. An energetic user of rosaries, a fervent petitioner at her prayers, but also an unbridled sower of calumny and clandestine panic. In a word, she was the scorpion of Clochemerle, but a scorpion disguised as a woman of genuine piety. — Gabriel Chevallier

The law, as manipulated by clever and highly respected rascals, still remains the best avenue for a career of honourable and leisurely plunder. — Gabriel Chevallier

Men are sheep. Which is why armies and wars are possible. They die victims of their stupid docility. — Gabriel Chevallier

Women all have the same female pretentions and even the most virtuous among them like to convince themselves that they can tempt a man. — Gabriel Chevallier

They had also brought in a piece of human scrap so monstrous that everyone recoiled at the sight, that it shocked men who were no longer shockable. I shut my eyes; I had already seen far too much and I wanted to be able to forget eventually. This thing, this being, screamed in a corner like a maniac. The revulsion that turned our stomachs told us that it would be an act of generosity, a fraternal act, to finish him off. — Gabriel Chevallier

God? Come off it, the heavens are empty, as empty as a corpse. There's nothing in the sky but shells and all the other murderous devices made by men . . . — Gabriel Chevallier

More than anything I am afraid of fear itself overwhelming me. One must use any bit of folly to control it. — Gabriel Chevallier

There is nothing in human affairs that is a true subject for ridicule. Beneath comedy lies the ferment of tragedy; the farcical is but a cloak for coming catastrophe. — Gabriel Chevallier

There is something relentless about the serenity of nature which has a crushing effect on the human mind. The lavish splendour of her phases, which completely ignores human strife, fills the race of men with the sensation of their own ephemeral insignificance and drives them mad. — Gabriel Chevallier

My county? Another concept to which you attach from a distance a rather vague ideal. You want to know what "my country" really is? Nothing more or less than a gathering of shareholders, a form of property, bourgeois mentality, and vanity. Think about all the people in your country whom you wouldn't go near, and you'll see that the ties that are supposed to bind us together don't go very deep.... — Gabriel Chevallier

Love is a transaction, at least of emotions in the rarest cases: you love to get something in return. — Gabriel Chevallier

The middle classes did not go to public hospitals; those places were reserved for workers, child-mothers, and those unfortunates who had wasted their inheritance, 'squandered the lot', and thus deserved the worst punishments, those, in short, who had gone to rack and ruin. Families would warn their wastrel offspring, their prodigal sons, that 'You'll end up in hospital!', that is, poor, alone and ashamed . Seeing the forbidding exteriors of these institutions, their gloomy corridors, the miserable huddles of mourners that sometimes emerged, used to make me think vaguely of leper colonies. — Gabriel Chevallier

Victorious troops are those who kill more, and here we were the victims. This put the finishing touch to our demoralisation. The soldiers had lost conviction long ago. Now they lost confidence. — Gabriel Chevallier

It was as though the world had had a fresh coat of paint, and every heart acquired a store of illusions that made the burden of life less hard to bear. — Gabriel Chevallier

For the wine of Clochemerle is at once exquisite and treacherous; it charms first the nose, then the palate, finally the entire man. Mark well that if it makes a man drunk it does not do so malignantly. It produces an enchanting light-heartedness, an intellectual sparkle which liberates the drinker from the constraints and conventions which bind him in his daily life. — Gabriel Chevallier

Alas, God's poor ministers are just as much in the dark as we are. You must believe like old women believe, the ones that look like witches, who mumble to themselves in churches under the nose of cheap, plaster saints. As soon as you start to use your reason, to look for a rainbow, you always run up against the great excuse, mystery. You will be advised to light some candles, put coins in the box, say a few rosaries, and make yourself stupid. — Gabriel Chevallier

I have noticed that the bravest are the ones most lacking in imagination and sensitivity. This is understandable. If life had not already accustomed the men in the front lines to resignation and the passive obedience of the humble, they would run away. And if those defending the front were highly strung intellectuals, the war would soon become impossible. — Gabriel Chevallier

In short, the war got off to a pretty good start, with the help of chaos. — Gabriel Chevallier

During several centuries Clochemerle, far from the cities and trade routes, had lived in stillness and isolation. But now, at last, the clamour of the great world was crossing the invisible barrier, bringing doubts, temptations, and discontents. — Gabriel Chevallier

He was regarded merely as an eccentric employee of indifferent merit, and his post of deputy chief clerk was the highest he would ever reach. Well aware of this, he made it a rule never to show any zeal, except in special circumstances. It is true that in these cases his zeal was clothed with a spirit of vengeance directed against the whole human race - this being his second favourite occupation. Petitbidois would have liked to hold the reins of power. This being beyond his sphere, he utilized the small driblets of authority which came his way for the purpose of casting ridicule upon established law and order, by making it act as a sort of unintelligent and, if possible, malicious Providence. 'The world is an idiot place anyway,' he would say, 'so why worry? Life is just a lottery. Let us leave the decision to chance. — Gabriel Chevallier

I know I am incapable of courage unless I have decided to give my life. Without that choice, there is nothing but flight. But you take such a decision on the spur of the moment and you cannot make it last for weeks and months. The mental effort is too great. Hence the rarity of true courage. We generally accept a kind of lame compromise between the destiny and the man, which reason rejects. — Gabriel Chevallier

Let me give you the balance sheet of this war: fifty great men to go down in the annals of history; millions of dead who won't be mentioned any more; and one thousand millionaires who lay down the law. A soldier's life is worth about fifty francs in the wallet of some fat industrialist in London, Paris, Berlin, New York, Vienna or anywhere else. Are you getting the picture?' 'So — Gabriel Chevallier

Frail to the point of invalidism, without family and with nothing to look forward to, she [Mlle Muguette] yet contrived to be happy. How strange a thing is happiness! Mlle Pimpalet, the notary's wife, arrogantly middle-class, well-furnished with the goods of this world, cared for and waited on, yet invariably looked as if she had been given rat poison for breakfast. While Muguette with nothing, almost on the parish, was radiant with carefree joyousness. Her courage almost made people want to kiss her. — Gabriel Chevallier

I had been astonished to find myself in the middle of the war yet not be able to find it, unable to accept that in fact the war consisted precisely of this stasis. — Gabriel Chevallier

It is something of a tragedy for young girls of good family that they cannot carry on a love-affair in a simple, straightforward way, in secret, below their station if need be, as do their sisters of humbler origin, who can place their affections wherever they wish without risk of misdirecting a family fortune or making a 'bad match'. — Gabriel Chevallier

The Clochemerle 1929 was a magnificent wine. Drinking it in small sips, his grace the Archbishop felt himself well disposed towards the Clochemerlins. It takes all sorts to make a world and a Church, to people Heaven and Hell. But there was no denying that it took capable vignerons to make a wine like this, men whose minds must on no account be distracted by excessive metaphysical cares. — Gabriel Chevallier

...the schoolmaster was one of those men for whom virtuous indignation was a necessity. — Gabriel Chevallier

Once again was it proved that the designs of Providence are impenetrable and that the sinner, climbing out of the pit of his filthiness, may feel himself touched by grace. — Gabriel Chevallier

She was one of those women who are usually referred to in the past tense, of whom one says: 'She had a certain freshness and bloom about her,' and whose freshness and bloom passed unnoticed even when she still had them. — Gabriel Chevallier

Men are stupid and ignorant. That is why they suffer. Instead of thinking, they believe all that they are told, all that they are taught. They choose their lords and masters without judging them, with a fatal taste for slavery. — Gabriel Chevallier

At Clochemerle, the greater number of the men put up with their wives, and the great majority of the women with their husbands. If this hardly amounted to adoration, in the majority of homes at any rate the men and women found each other very nearly endurable. — Gabriel Chevallier

The Church needs a firm hierarchy and is forced to distrust such of her underlings as show a tendency to become too holy. — Gabriel Chevallier

Men's opinions are based on the size of their bank balance. To have or not to have, as Shakespeare would say.' 'Before — Gabriel Chevallier

The desire for carnal possession quickly cools, whereas the desire to own land never quits the heart of man. — Gabriel Chevallier

There were, in Clochemerle, a number of lady 'invalids', their conversation one long jeremiad concerning their health, who had worn out their husbands and outlived them by fifteen or twenty years. Since, all their lives, they had spent themselves only drop by drop, their extreme old age was still charged with vital fluid, flowing very meagrely yet sufficient to keep them on their feet and living, so to speak, vegetatively, behind mask-like countenances of wood or old ivory. They breathed in slow motion, everything about them was almost dead excepting those feeble pulsations of the heart which kept just enough pale blood flowing beneath their wrinkled skins. — Gabriel Chevallier