Magnum Champagne Quotes

Margaret had been right. I’d never admitted how angry it made me when she insulted soldiers like Rémy or when she insinuated that Bitsi’s mourning was a charade. I’d never admitted I’d been jealous of her glamorous life. I’d bottled up my resentment, and like a magnum of champagne that someone had shaken, sticky emotions came bursting out. In the moment, I’d wanted to punish her, and a moment was enough to ruin a life—Margaret’s and her daughter’s.

In Bordeaux, big bottles could range from magnum (the equivalent of two bottles) to Marie-Jeanne (three bottles) to double magnum (four bottles) to Jéroboam (six bottles) to Impériale (eight bottles). In Burgundy and Champagne, older Jéroboams were called Rehoboams, an Impériale was called a Methuselah, and even bigger bottles existed, including a Salmanazar (twelve bottles), a Balthazar (sixteen bottles), and a Nebuchadnezzar (twenty bottles).

What you see of a lie when you act it out (and most lies are acted out, rather than told) is very little of what it actually is. A lie is connected to everything else. It produces the same effect on the world that a single drop of sewage produces in even the largest crystal magnum of champagne. It is something best considered live and growing. When the lies get big enough, the whole world spoils. But if you look close enough, the biggest of lies is composed of smaller lies, and those are composed of still smaller lies—and the smallest of lies is where the big lie starts. It is not the mere misstatement of fact. It is instead an act that has the aspect of the most serious conspiracy ever to possess the race of man. Its seeming innocuousness, its trivial meanness, the feeble arrogance that gives rise to it, the apparently trivial circumventing of responsibility that it aims at—these all work effectively to camouflage its true nature, its genuine dangerousness, and its equivalence with the great acts of evil that man perpetrates and often enjoys. Lies corrupt the world. Worse, that is their intent.

1. "...All the complicated things in life can be settled over a cup of coffee. A person will tell more of their private life after one good cup of coffee, than after a magnum of Champagne or a quarter of port.." ((page 79)). 2. "..Care for the needy,comfort the distressed, befriend the rejected.." ((Simon's Testimony..page 464..)) 3."..The man Jesus said that was wrong and offered the sick the courage to become well, the weak the ability to grow a strong spirit, and nonbelievers the chance to believe.." ((Simon's Testimony..page 461))