Jean-Christophe Quotes

“"Stones are hard everywhere."”

“I, too, shall wake again.”

“Everything is music for the born musician.”

“Ce n'est pas la paix que je cherche, c'est la vie.”

“It is the artist's business to create sunshine when the sun fails.”

“Je sais enfin ce qui distingue l'homme de la bête: ce sont les ennuis d'argent.”

“Wikipedia: Jean-Christophe”

“The continual endeavor of man should be to lessen the sum of suffering and cruelty: that is the first duty of humanity.”

“Tout homme qui est un vrai homme doit apprendre à rester seul au milieu de tous, à penser seul pour tous- et au besoin contre tous.”

“All these young millionaires were anarchists, of course: when a man possesses everything it is the supreme luxury for him to deny society: for in that way he can evade his responsibilities”

“"The public will only stand genius in infinitesimal doses, sprinkled with mannerisms and fashionable literature. ... A 'fashionable genius'! Doesn't that make you laugh? ... What waste of power!"”

“Skepticism, riddling the faith of yesterday, prepares the way for the faith of to-morrow.
• Variant: "Skepticism, riddling the faith of yesterday, prepared the way for the faith of tomorrow." George Seldes (ed.) The Great Quotations (1960) p. 864”

“Islands of memory begin to rise above the river of his life. At first they are little uncharted islands, rocks just peeping above the surface of the waters. Round about them and behind in the twilight of the dawn stretches the great untroubled sheet of water; then new islands, touched to gold by the sun.”

“Wrong or right, he would never again for anything in the world have recourse to a priest. He admitted that these men were his superiors in intelligence or by reason of their sacred calling; but in argument there is neither superiority, nor inferiority, nor title, nor age, nor name; nothing is of worth but truth, before which all men are equal.”

“"There are some dead who are more alive than the living."
"No, no! It would be more true to say that there are some who are more dead than the dead."
"Maybe. In any case there are old things which are still young."
"Then if they are still young we can find them for ourselves. ... But I don't believe it. What has been good once never is good again."”

“When Christophe at last made up his mind to go to bed, chilled in body and soul, he heard the window below him shut. And, as he lay, he thought sadly that it is cruel for the poor to dwell on the past, for they have no right to have a past, like the rich: they have no home, no corner of the earth wherein to house their memories: their joys, their sorrows, all their days, are scattered in the wind.”

“You are a vain fellow. You want to be a hero. That is why you do such silly things. A hero! ... I don't quite know what that is: but, you see, I imagine that a hero is a man who does what he can. The others do not do it.
• Variant: "A hero is one who does what he can. The others don't." Norbert Guterman (ed.) The Anchor Book of French Quotations‎ ([1965] 1990) p. 365”

“[P]erhaps there are in us forces other than mind and heart, other even than the senses — mysterious forces which take hold of us in the moments when the others are asleep; and perhaps it was such forces that Melchior had found in the depths of those pale eyes which had looked at him so timidly one evening when he had accosted the girl on the bank of the river, and had sat down beside her in the reeds — without knowing why — and had given her his hand.”

“[D]id he then love God, or was it only the music, as an impudent priest said to him one day in jest, without thinking of the unhappiness which his quip might cause in him? Anybody else would not have paid any attention to it, and would not have changed his mode of living — (so many people put up with not knowing what they think!) But Christophe was cursed with an awkward need for sincerity, which filled him with scruples at every turn. And when scruples came to him they possessed him forever.”

“His loyal and eager nature, brought for the first time to the test of love, gave itself utterly, and demanded a gift as utter without the reservation of one particle of the heart. He admitted no sharing in friendship. Being ready to sacrifice all for his friend, he thought it right and even necessary that his friend should wholly sacrifice himself and everything for him. But he was beginning to feel that the world was not built on the model of his own inflexible character, and that he was asking things which others could not give.”