Bras Cubas Quotes

Then I pondered the fact that tight boots are one of the best bits of good fortune on earth, because by making one's feet hurt they give occasion to the pleasure of taking them off. Punish your feet, wretch, then unpunish them and there you have cheap happiness, at the mercy of shoemakers and worthy of Epicurus.’’ The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas- Machado de Asis

Pain relents sometimes, but it gives way to indifference, which is a dreamless sleep, or to pleasure, which is a bastard pain. Then man, whipped and rebellious, ran ahead of the fatality of things after a nebulous and dodging figure made of remnants, one remnant of the impalpable, another of the improbable, another of the invisible, all sewn together with a precarious stitch by the needle of imagination. And that figure—nothing less than the chimera of happiness — either runs away from him perpetually or lets itself be caught by the hem, and man would clutch it to his breast, and then she would laugh, mockingly, and disappear like an illusion.’’ The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas- Machado de Asis

I might add that serious people will find some semblance of a normal novel, while frivolous people won't find their usual one here. There it stands, deprived of the esteem of the serious and the love of the frivolous, the two main pillars of opinion. The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas- Machado de Asis

[…] I saw everything that was passing before me—torments and delights—from that thing called glory to the other one called misery, and I saw love multiplying misery and I saw misery intensifying weakness.’’ The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas- Machado de Asis

My uncle the canon was quite different. He was full of austerity and purity. Those traits weren't elevating a superior spirit, however, but only compensating for a mediocre one.’’ The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas- Machado de Asis

What is important is the general description of the domestic milieu and that has been shown here—vulgarity of character, love of gaudy appearance and clamor, a slackness of will, the rule of whim, and more. Out of that earth and that manure this flower was born.’’ The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas- Machado de Asis

The poor thing was suffering cruelly because cancer is indifferent to a person's virtues.’’ The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas- Machado de Asis

She was pretty, fresh, she came from the hands of nature full of that sorcery, uncertain and eternal, that an individual passes to another individual for the secret ends of creation.’’ The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas- Machado de Asis

There was no Christian resignation or philosophical acceptance in him. It seemed that misery had calloused his soul to the point of taking away the feeling of the mud.’’ The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas- Machado de Asis

It must be believed that Dona Placida still couldn't talk when she was born, but if she could have, she might have said to the authors of her days, "Here I am. Why did you call me?' And the sacristan and the sacristaness would naturally have answered her, 'We called you to burn your fingers on pots, your eyes in sewing, to eat poorly or not at all, to go from one place to another in drudgery, getting ill and recovering only to get ill and recover once again, sad now, then desperate, resigned tomorrow, but always with your hands on the pot and your eyes on the sewing until one day you end up in the mire or in the hospital. That's why we called you in a moment of sympathy.'’’ The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas- Machado de Asis

Her husband didn't confess the reason for his refusal to me. He told me, too, that it was because of personal business and the serious, convinced face with which I listened to him did honor to human hypocrisy.’’ The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas- Machado de Asis

The main defect of this book is you, reader you were in a hurry to grow old and this book moves slowly. You love direct and continuous narration, and this book and my style are like drunkards, they stagger left and right, they walk and stop, mumble, yell, cackle, shake their fists at the sky, stumble and fall...