Quotes4study

A serious symptom. In the eighteenth century, the ancient melancholy of the dejected classes vanishes. They began to laugh. They rally the grand meg and the grand dab. Given Louis XV. they call the King of France "le Marquis de Pantin." And behold, they are almost gay. A sort of gleam proceeds from these miserable wretches, as though their consciences were not heavy within them any more. These lamentable tribes of darkness have no longer merely the desperate audacity of actions, they possess the heedless audacity of mind. A sign that they are losing the sense of their criminality, and that they feel, even among thinkers and dreamers, some indefinable support which the latter themselves know not of. A sign that theft and pillage are beginning to filter into doctrines and sophisms, in such a way as to lose somewhat of their ugliness, while communicating much of it to sophisms and doctrines. A sign, in short, of some outbreak which is prodigious and near unless some diversion shall arise.

Victor Hugo     Les Miserables

We both put our eyes to the grating. The prisoner lay with his face towards us, in a very deep sleep, breathing slowly and heavily. He was a middle-sized man, coarsely clad as became his calling, with a coloured shirt protruding through the rent in his tattered coat. He was, as the inspector had said, extremely dirty, but the grime which covered his face could not conceal its repulsive ugliness. A broad wheal from an old scar ran right across it from eye to chin, and by its contraction had turned up one side of the upper lip, so that three teeth were exposed in a perpetual snarl. A shock of very bright red hair grew low over his eyes and forehead.

Arthur Conan Doyle     The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

The old woman retorted with a composite grimace, and a wonderful improvisation of hatred taking advantage of feebleness and ugliness, which was, unfortunately, wasted in the dark:--

Victor Hugo     Les Miserables

The prince was haunted all that day by the face of Lebedeff's nephew whom he had seen for the first time that morning, just as one is haunted at times by some persistent musical refrain. By a curious association of ideas, the young man always appeared as the murderer of whom Lebedeff had spoken when introducing him to Muishkin. Yes, he had read something about the murder, and that quite recently. Since he came to Russia, he had heard many stories of this kind, and was interested in them. His conversation with the waiter, an hour ago, chanced to be on the subject of this murder of the Zemarins, and the latter had agreed with him about it. He thought of the waiter again, and decided that he was no fool, but a steady, intelligent man: though, said he to himself, "God knows what he may really be; in a country with which one is unfamiliar it is difficult to understand the people one meets." He was beginning to have a passionate faith in the Russian soul, however, and what discoveries he had made in the last six months, what unexpected discoveries! But every soul is a mystery, and depths of mystery lie in the soul of a Russian. He had been intimate with Rogojin, for example, and a brotherly friendship had sprung up between them--yet did he really know him? What chaos and ugliness fills the world at times! What a self-satisfied rascal is that nephew of Lebedeff's! "But what am I thinking," continued the prince to himself. "Can he really have committed that crime? Did he kill those six persons? I seem to be confusing things... how strange it all is.... My head goes round... And Lebedeff's daughter--how sympathetic and charming her face was as she held the child in her arms! What an innocent look and child-like laugh she had! It is curious that I had forgotten her until now. I expect Lebedeff adores her--and I really believe, when I think of it, that as sure as two and two make four, he is fond of that nephew, too!"

Fyodor Dostoyevsky     The Idiot

"Aigle de Meaux, down with your paws. You produce on me no effect with your gesture of Hippocrates refusing Artaxerxes' bric-a-brac. I excuse you from the task of soothing me. Moreover, I am sad. What do you wish me to say to you? Man is evil, man is deformed; the butterfly is a success, man is a failure. God made a mistake with that animal. A crowd offers a choice of ugliness. The first comer is a wretch, Femme--woman--rhymes with infame,--infamous. Yes, I have the spleen, complicated with melancholy, with homesickness, plus hypochondria, and I am vexed and I rage, and I yawn, and I am bored, and I am tired to death, and I am stupid! Let God go to the devil!"

Victor Hugo     Les Miserables

The gossip who did this thing was a gorgon named Madame Victurnien, the guardian and door-keeper of every one's virtue. Madame Victurnien was fifty-six, and re-enforced the mask of ugliness with the mask of age. A quavering voice, a whimsical mind. This old dame had once been young--astonishing fact! In her youth, in '93, she had married a monk who had fled from his cloister in a red cap, and passed from the Bernardines to the Jacobins. She was dry, rough, peevish, sharp, captious, almost venomous; all this in memory of her monk, whose widow she was, and who had ruled over her masterfully and bent her to his will. She was a nettle in which the rustle of the cassock was visible. At the Restoration she had turned bigot, and that with so much energy that the priests had forgiven her her monk. She had a small property, which she bequeathed with much ostentation to a religious community. She was in high favor at the episcopal palace of Arras. So this Madame Victurnien went to Montfermeil, and returned with the remark, "I have seen the child."

Victor Hugo     Les Miserables

"Matelote is homely!" he cried: "Matelote is of a dream of ugliness! Matelote is a chimaera. This is the secret of her birth: a Gothic Pygmalion, who was making gargoyles for cathedrals, fell in love with one of them, the most horrible, one fine morning. He besought Love to give it life, and this produced Matelote. Look at her, citizens! She has chromate-of-lead-colored hair, like Titian's mistress, and she is a good girl. I guarantee that she will fight well. Every good girl contains a hero. As for Mother Hucheloup, she's an old warrior. Look at her moustaches! She inherited them from her husband. A hussar indeed! She will fight too. These two alone will strike terror to the heart of the banlieue. Comrades, we shall overthrow the government as true as there are fifteen intermediary acids between margaric acid and formic acid; however, that is a matter of perfect indifference to me. Gentlemen, my father always detested me because I could not understand mathematics. I understand only love and liberty. I am Grantaire, the good fellow. Having never had any money, I never acquired the habit of it, and the result is that I have never lacked it; but, if I had been rich, there would have been no more poor people! You would have seen! Oh, if the kind hearts only had fat purses, how much better things would go! I picture myself Jesus Christ with Rothschild's fortune! How much good he would do! Matelote, embrace me! You are voluptuous and timid! You have cheeks which invite the kiss of a sister, and lips which claim the kiss of a lover."

Victor Hugo     Les Miserables

As I said this I suddenly beheld the figure of a man, at some distance, advancing towards me with superhuman speed. He bounded over the crevices in the ice, among which I had walked with caution; his stature, also, as he approached, seemed to exceed that of man. I was troubled; a mist came over my eyes, and I felt a faintness seize me, but I was quickly restored by the cold gale of the mountains. I perceived, as the shape came nearer (sight tremendous and abhorred!) that it was the wretch whom I had created. I trembled with rage and horror, resolving to wait his approach and then close with him in mortal combat. He approached; his countenance bespoke bitter anguish, combined with disdain and malignity, while its unearthly ugliness rendered it almost too horrible for human eyes. But I scarcely observed this; rage and hatred had at first deprived me of utterance, and I recovered only to overwhelm him with words expressive of furious detestation and contempt.

Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley     Frankenstein

In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness.

George Bernard Shaw     Maxims for Revolutionists

With that exception, Paris is amiable. It accepts everything royally; it is not too particular about its Venus; its Callipyge is Hottentot; provided that it is made to laugh, it condones; ugliness cheers it, deformity provokes it to laughter, vice diverts it; be eccentric and you may be an eccentric; even hypocrisy, that supreme cynicism, does not disgust it; it is so literary that it does not hold its nose before Basile, and is no more scandalized by the prayer of Tartuffe than Horace was repelled by the "hiccup" of Priapus. No trait of the universal face is lacking in the profile of Paris. The bal Mabile is not the polymnia dance of the Janiculum, but the dealer in ladies' wearing apparel there devours the lorette with her eyes, exactly as the procuress Staphyla lay in wait for the virgin Planesium. The Barriere du Combat is not the Coliseum, but people are as ferocious there as though Caesar were looking on. The Syrian hostess has more grace than Mother Saguet, but, if Virgil haunted the Roman wine-shop, David d'Angers, Balzac and Charlet have sat at the tables of Parisian taverns. Paris reigns. Geniuses flash forth there, the red tails prosper there. Adonai passes on his chariot with its twelve wheels of thunder and lightning; Silenus makes his entry there on his ass. For Silenus read Ramponneau.

Victor Hugo     Les Miserables

Tellson's Bank by Temple Bar was an old-fashioned place, even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty. It was very small, very dark, very ugly, very incommodious. It was an old-fashioned place, moreover, in the moral attribute that the partners in the House were proud of its smallness, proud of its darkness, proud of its ugliness, proud of its incommodiousness. They were even boastful of its eminence in those particulars, and were fired by an express conviction that, if it were less objectionable, it would be less respectable. This was no passive belief, but an active weapon which they flashed at more convenient places of business. Tellson's (they said) wanted no elbow-room, Tellson's wanted no light, Tellson's wanted no embellishment. Noakes and Co.'s might, or Snooks Brothers' might; but Tellson's, thank Heaven--!

Charles Dickens     A Tale of Two Cities

In his efforts to escape from ugliness and unhappiness the rich man intensifies both. Every new yard of West End creates a new acre of East End.

George Bernard Shaw     Maxims for Revolutionists

At the one end of the hall, the one where he was, were judges, with abstracted air, in threadbare robes, who were gnawing their nails or closing their eyelids; at the other end, a ragged crowd; lawyers in all sorts of attitudes; soldiers with hard but honest faces; ancient, spotted woodwork, a dirty ceiling, tables covered with serge that was yellow rather than green; doors blackened by handmarks; tap-room lamps which emitted more smoke than light, suspended from nails in the wainscot; on the tables candles in brass candlesticks; darkness, ugliness, sadness; and from all this there was disengaged an austere and august impression, for one there felt that grand human thing which is called the law, and that grand divine thing which is called justice.

Victor Hugo     Les Miserables

One of them was a young fellow of about twenty-seven, not tall, with black curling hair, and small, grey, fiery eyes. His nose was broad and flat, and he had high cheek bones; his thin lips were constantly compressed into an impudent, ironical--it might almost be called a malicious--smile; but his forehead was high and well formed, and atoned for a good deal of the ugliness of the lower part of his face. A special feature of this physiognomy was its death-like pallor, which gave to the whole man an indescribably emaciated appearance in spite of his hard look, and at the same time a sort of passionate and suffering expression which did not harmonize with his impudent, sarcastic smile and keen, self-satisfied bearing. He wore a large fur--or rather astrachan--overcoat, which had kept him warm all night, while his neighbour had been obliged to bear the full severity of a Russian November night entirely unprepared. His wide sleeveless mantle with a large cape to it--the sort of cloak one sees upon travellers during the winter months in Switzerland or North Italy--was by no means adapted to the long cold journey through Russia, from Eydkuhnen to St. Petersburg.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky     The Idiot

"That is also my victim!" he exclaimed. "In his murder my crimes are consummated; the miserable series of my being is wound to its close! Oh, Frankenstein! Generous and self-devoted being! What does it avail that I now ask thee to pardon me? I, who irretrievably destroyed thee by destroying all thou lovedst. Alas! He is cold, he cannot answer me." His voice seemed suffocated, and my first impulses, which had suggested to me the duty of obeying the dying request of my friend in destroying his enemy, were now suspended by a mixture of curiosity and compassion. I approached this tremendous being; I dared not again raise my eyes to his face, there was something so scaring and unearthly in his ugliness. I attempted to speak, but the words died away on my lips. The monster continued to utter wild and incoherent self-reproaches. At length I gathered resolution to address him in a pause of the tempest of his passion.

Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley     Frankenstein

2. CRATES, of Thebes, a Cynic philosopher of the latter half of the 4th century. He was the famous pupil of Diogenes, and the last great representative of Cynicism. It is said that he lost his ample fortune owing to the Macedonian invasion, but a more probable story is that he sacrificed it in accordance with his principles, directing the banker, to whom he entrusted it, to give it to his sons if they should prove fools, but to the poor if his sons should prove philosophers. He gave up his life to the attainment of virtue and the propagation of ascetic self-control. His habit of entering houses for this purpose, uninvited, earned him the nickname [Greek: Thyrepanoiktês] ("Door-opener"). His marriage with Hipparchia, daughter of a wealthy Thracian family, was in curious contrast to the prosaic character of his life. Attracted by the nobility of his character and undeterred by his poverty and ugliness, she insisted on becoming his wife in defiance of her father's commands. The date of his death is unknown, though he seems to have lived into the 3rd century. His writings were few. According to Diogenes Laërtius, he was the author of a number of letters on philosophical subjects; but those extant under the name of Crates (R. Hercher, _Epistolographi Graeci_, 1873) are, spurious, the work of later rhetoricians. Diogenes Laërtius credits him with a short poem, [Greek: Paignia], and several philosophic tragedies. Plutarch's life of Crates is lost. The great importance of Crates' work is that he formed the link between Cynicism and the Stoics, Zeno of Citium being his pupil. Entry: 2

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 6 "Coucy-le-Château" to "Crocodile"     1910-1911

In 1880 Zola, who had by this time formed a regular school of disciples, issued with certain of them a collection of short stories, _Les Soirées de Médan_, which contains one of his own best things, _L'Attaque du moulin_, and also the capital story, _Boule de suif_, by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893), who in the same year published poems, _Des vers_, of very remarkable if not strictly poetical quality. Maupassant developed during his short literary career perhaps the greatest powers shown by any French novelist since Flaubert (his sponsor in both senses) in a series of longer novels (_Une Vie_, _Bel Ami_, _Pierre et Jean_, _Fort comme la mort_) and shorter stories (_Monsieur Parent_, _Les Soeurs Rondoli_, _Le Horla_), but they were distorted by the Naturalist pessimism and grime, and perhaps also by the brain-disease of which their author died. M. J. K. Huysmans (b. 1848), also a contributor to _Les Soirées de Médan_, who had begun a little earlier with _Marthe_ (1876) and other books, gave his most characteristic work in 1884 with _Au rebours_ and in 1891 with _Là-bas_, stories of exaggerated and "satanic" pose, decorated with perhaps the extremest achievements of the school in mere ugliness and nastiness. Afterwards, by an obvious reaction, he returned to Catholicism. Of about the same date as these two are two other novelists of note, Julien Viaud ("Pierre Loti," b. 1850), a naval officer who embodied his experiences of foreign service with a faint dose of story and character interest, and a far larger one of elaborate description, in a series of books (_Aziyadé_, _Le Mariage de Loti_, _Madame Chrysanthème_, &c.), and M. Paul Bourget (b. 1852), an important critic as well as novelist who deflected the Naturalist current into a "psychological" channel, connecting itself higher with Stendhal, and composed in its books very popular in their way--_Cruelle Énigme_ (1885), _Le Disciple_, _Terre promise_, _Cosmopolis_. As a contrast or complement to Bourget's "psychological" novel may be taken the "ethical" novel of Edouard Rod (1857-1909)--_La Vie privée de Michel Tessier_ (1893), _Le Sens de la vie_, _Les Trois Coeurs_. Contemporary with these as a novelist though a much older man, and occupied at different times of his life with verse and with criticism, came Anatole France (b. 1844), who in _Le Crime de Silvestre Bonnard_, _La Rôtisserie de la reine Pédauque_, _Le Lys rouge_, and others, has made a kind of novel as different from the ordinary styles as Pierre Loti's, but of far higher appeal in its wit, its subtle fancy, and its perfect French. Ferdinand Fabre (1830-1898) and René Bazin (b. 1853) represent the union, not too common in the French novel, of orthodoxy in morals and religion with literary ability. Further must be mentioned Paul Hervieu (b. 1857), a dramatist rather than a novelist; the brothers Margueritte (Paul, b. 1860, Victor, b. 1866), especially strong in short stories and passages; another pair of brothers of Belgian origin writing under the name of "J. H. Rosny"--Zolaists partly converted not to religion but to science and a sort of non-Christian virtue; the ingenious and amusing, if not exactly moral, brilliancy of Marcel Prévost (b. 1862); the contorted but rather attractive style and the perverse sentiment of Maurice Barrès (b. 1862); and, above all, the audacious and inimitable dialogue pieces of "Gyp" (Madame de Martel, b. 1850), worthy of the best times of French literature for gaiety, satire, acuteness and style, and perhaps likely, with the work of Maupassant, Pierre Loti and Anatole France, to represent the capital achievement of their particular generation to posterity. Entry: MM

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 11, Slice 2 "French Literature" to "Frost, William"     1910-1911

Up to the present we have said nothing about the ecclesiastical buildings in Germany, for the reason that the period between the Reformation and the conclusion of the Thirty Years' War was not favourable to church building. The only example worth mentioning is the church of St Michael at Munich (1583-1597), and that more for its plan than for its architecture. It has a wide nave covered with a barrel vault, and a series of chapels forming semicircular recesses on each side, the walls between acting as buttresses to the great vault. The transept is not deep enough to have any architectural value, but if at the east end there had been only an apse it would have been a better termination than the long choir. The Liebfrauenkirche at Dresden (1726-1745) has a good plan, but internally is arranged like a theatre with pit, tiers of boxes, and a gallery, all in the worst possible taste, and externally the dome is far too high and destroys the scale of the lower part of the church. An elliptical dome is never a pleasing object, and in the church of St Charles Borromeo, at Vienna, there are no other features to redeem its ugliness. The Marienkirche at Wolfenbüttel (1608-1622) has a fine Italian portal; its side elevation is spoilt by the series of gable dormers, which are of no possible use, as the church (of the _Hallenkirchen_ type) is well lighted through the aisle windows. The portal of the Schlosskapelle (1555) at Dresden is a fine work in the Italian style; and lastly the church at Bückeburg, in a late debased style, is redeemed only by the fact that it is built in fine masonry and that the joints run through all the rococo details. (R. P. S.) Entry: RENAISSANCE

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Slice 4 "Aram, Eugene" to "Arcueil"     1910-1911

The Chinese style (_Kara-ryu_), the fundamental essence of all Japanese art, has a fairly distinct history, dating back to the introduction of Buddhism into China (A.D. 62), and it is said to have been chiefly from the works of Wu Tao-zu, the master of the 8th century, that Kanaoka drew his inspiration. This early Chinese manner, which lasted in the parent country down to the end of the 13th century, was characterized by a virile grace of line, a grave dignity of composition, striking simplicity of technique, and a strong but incomplete naturalistic ideal. The colouring, harmonious but subdued in tone, held a place altogether secondary to that of the outline, and was frequently omitted altogether, even in the most famous works. Shadows and reflections were ignored, and perspective, approximately correct for landscape distances, was isometrical for near objects, while the introduction of a symbolic sun or moon lent the sole distinction between a day and a night scene. The art was one of imperfect evolution, but for thirteen centuries it was the only living pictorial art in the world, and the Chinese deserve the honour of having created landscape painting. The materials used were water-colours, brushes, usually of deer-hair, and a surface of unsized paper, translucid silk or wooden panel. The chief motives were landscapes of a peculiarly wild and romantic type, animal life, trees and flowers, and figure compositions drawn from Chinese and Buddhist history and Taoist legend; and these, together with the grand aims and strange shortcomings of its principles and the limited range of its methods, were adopted almost without change by Japan. It was a noble art, but unfortunately the rivalry of the Buddhist and later native styles permitted it to fall into comparative neglect, and it was left for a few of the faithful, the most famous of whom was a priest of the 14th century named Kawo, to preserve it from inanition till the great Chinese renaissance that lent its stamp to the next period. The reputed founder of Japanese caricature may also be added to the list. He was a priest named Kakuyu, but better known as the abbot of Toba, who lived in the 12th century. An accomplished artist in the Chinese manner, he amused himself and his friends by burlesque sketches, marked by a grace and humour that his imitators never equalled. Later, the motive of the Toba pictures, as such caricatures were called, tended to degenerate, and the elegant figures of Kakuyu were replaced by scrawls that often substituted indecency and ugliness for art and wit. Some of the old masters of the Yamato school were, however, admirable in their rendering of the burlesque, and in modern times Kyosai, the last of the Hokusai school, outdid all his predecessors in the riotous originality of his weird and comic fancies. A new phase of the art now lives in the pages of the newspaper press. Entry: FIG

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 15, Slice 2 "Jacobites" to "Japan" (part)     1910-1911