Scaramouche Quotes

He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.

...it is human nature, I suppose, to be futile and ridiculous.

But I like my madness. There is a thrill in it unknown to such sanity as yours. ~ Book 1, Chapter 9,

Do you know, André, I sometimes think that you have no heart.' 'Presumably because I sometimes betray intelligence.

He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. And that was all his patrimony.

To do what you imply would require nothing short of divine intervention. You must change man, not systems.

He was suffering from the loss of an illusion.

Do you expect sincerity in man when hypocrisy is the very keynote of human nature? We are nurtured on it; we are schooled in it, we live by it; and we rarely realize it.’ – Book 3, Chapter 16

Truth is so often disconcerting.

I am afraid, monsieur, you will have to kill me first, and I have a prejudice against being killed before nine o'clock.

there is no worse hell than that provided by the regrets for wasted opportunities.

If the windmill should prove too formidable," said he, from the threshold, "I may see what can be done with the wind.

Most of this world's misery is the fruit not as priests tell us of wickedness, but of stupidity.... And we know that of all stupidities he considered anger the most deplorable.

What a man dares to do, he should dare to confess- unless he is a coward.

We are all, he says, the sport of destiny. Ah, but not quite. Destiny is an intelligent force, moving with purpose.

With you it is always the law, never equity.

It is a futile and ridiculous struggle—but then... it is human nature, I suppose, to be futile and ridiculous.

The idea of equality is a by-product of the sentiment of envy. Since it must always prove beyond human ower to raise the inferior mass to a superior stratum, apostles of equality must ever be inferiors seeking to reduce their betters to their level. It follows that a nation that once admits this doctrine of equality will be dragged by it to the level, moral, intelletual and political, of its most worthless class.

But he looks no more than thirty. He's very handsome-- so much you will admit; nor will you deny that he is very wealthy and very powerful; the greatest nobleman in Brittany. He will make me a great lady.' 'God made you that, Aline.

He saw light, dazzling, blinding, and it scared him.

I am very poor - for a know nothing, understand nothing. It is not a calamitous condition until it is realized.

You often show yourself without any faculty of deductive reasoning.

Speed will follow when the mechanism of the movements is more assured.

Oh, you are mad!" she exclaimed, quite out of patience. "Possibly. But I like my madness.

I hate possibilities—God of God! I have lived on possibilities, and infernally near starved on them.

I recognize myself for part of this mad world, I suppose. You wouldn't have me take it seriously? I should lose my reason utterly if I did;

In life we pay for the evil that in life we do.

I admit that it is audacious," said Scaramouche. "But at your time of life you should have learnt that in this world nothing succeeds like audacity.

Pleasnt tilted his head curiously. "Scaramouch? Scaramouch Van Dreg? Is that you?" Scaramouch smiled nastily. "Oh yes. You have fallen into the clutches of your deadliest enemy." "What are you doing here?

The Crimson Pirate, The Mark of Zorro, Captain Blood, The Black Pirate, Adventures of Don Juan, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Sea Hawk, The Prisoner of Zenda, Scaramouche,

Out of his zestful study of Man, from Thucydides to the Encyclopaedists, from Seneca to Rousseau, he had confirmed into an unassailable conviction his earliest conscious impressions of the general insanity of his own species.

To do what you imply would require nothing short of divine intervention. you must change man, not systems. Can you and our vapouring friends of the Literary Chamber of Rennes, or any other learned society of France, devise a system of government that has never yet been tried? Surely not. And can we say of any system tried that it proved other than failure in the end? My dear Philippe, the future is to be read with certainty only in the past. Ad actu ad posse valet consecutio. Man never changes. He is always greedy, always acquisitive, always vile. I am speaking of Man in the bulk.

To deal justice by death has this disadvantage that the victim has no knowledge that justice has overtaken him. Had you died, had you been torn limb from limb that night, I should now repine in the thought of your eternal and untroubled slumber. Not in euthanasia, but in torment of mind should the guilty atone. You see, I am not sure that hell hereafter is a certainty, whilst I am quite sure that it can be a certainty in this life; and I desire you to continue to live yet awhile that you may taste something of its bitterness.

Je voudrais bien savoir pourquoi les gens qui se scandalisent si fort de la comédie de Molière ne disent mot de celle de Scaramouche." "La raison de cela, c'est que la comédie de Scaramouche joue le ciel et la religion, dont ces messieurs-là ne se soucient point; mais celle de Molière les joue eux-mêmes; c'est ce qu'ils ne peuvent souffrir.

enemies." "What Christian resignation!" "As for hating you, of all people! Why... I consider you adorable. I envy Leandre every day of my life. I have seriously thought of setting him to play Scaramouche, and playing lovers myself.

But the old Italian commedia that I loved—Pantaloon, Harlequin, Scaramouche, and the rest—lived on as they always had, with tightrope walkers, acrobats, jugglers, and puppeteers, in the platform spectacles at the St.-Germain and the St.-Laurent fairs.

And yet," interposed the villainous-looking fellow who played Scaramouche, "by your own confessing you don't hesitate, yourself, to trespass upon his property." "Ah, but then, you see, I am a lawyer. And lawyers are notoriously unable to observe the law, just as actors are notoriously unable to act.

I am just a rascal who tries to be honest—Scaramouche always, in fact; a creature of sophistries. Do you think that Ancenis would have me for its representative?” “Will it have Omnes Omnibus for its representative?” Le Chapelier was laughing, his countenance eager. “Ancenis will be convulsed with pride.

Do you wonder that they will

Evidently not. They are just governing

Ah, but then, you see, I am a lawyer. And lawyers are notoriously unable to observe the law, just as actors are notoriously unable to act.

For, as Andre-Louis so truly says, there is no worse hell than that provided by the regrets for wasted opportunities.

You behold him at the age of four-and-twenty stuffed with learning enough to produce an intellectual indigestion in an ordinary mind.

In my humble way I am a student of man, and some years ago I made the discovery that he is most intimately to be studied in the reflections of him provided for the theatre.

A scarlet flame suffused her face. 'You are very insolent,’ she said, lamely. ‘I’ve often been told so. But I don’t believe it.

When you say the people you mean, of course, the populace. Will you abolish it? That is the only way to ameliorate its lot, for as long as it remains populace its lot will be damnation.

In doing this they are striking at the very foundations of the throne. These fools do not perceive that if that throne falls over, it is they who stand nearest to it who will be crushed.

Attendez!... Je choisis mes rimes... Là, j'y suis. (Il fait ce qu'il dit, à mesure.) Je jette avec grâce mon feutre, Je fais lentement l'abandon Du grand manteau qui me calfeutre, Et je tire mon espadon; Élégant comme Céladon, Agile comme Scaramouche, Je vous préviens, cher Mirmidon, Qu'à la fin de l'envoi, je touche! (Premier engagement de fer.) Vous auriez bien dû rester neutre; Où vais-je vous larder, dindon ?... Dans le flanc, sous votre maheutre ?... Au coeur, sous votre bleu cordon ?... - Les coquilles tintent, ding-don ! Ma pointe voltige: une mouche ! Décidément... c'est au bedon, Qu'à la fin de l'envoi, je touche. Il me manque une rime en eutre... Vous rompez, plus blanc qu'amidon ? C'est pour me fournir le mot pleutre ! - Tac! je pare la pointe dont Vous espériez me faire don: - J'ouvre la ligne, - je la bouche... Tiens bien ta broche, Laridon ! A la fin de l'envoi, je touche. (Il annonce solennellement:) Envoi Prince, demande à Dieu pardon ! Je quarte du pied, j'escarmouche, Je coupe, je feinte... (Se fendant.) Hé! Là donc! (Le vicomte chancelle, Cyrano salue.) A la fin de l'envoi, je touche.

He had wrought them up to a pitch of dangerous passion, and they were ripe for any violence to which he urged them. If he had failed with the windmill, at least he was now master of the wind.

But he looks no more than thirty. He is very handsome - so much you will admit; nor will you deny that he is very wealthy and very powerful; the greatest nobleman in Britany. He will make me a great lady." "God made you that, Aline.

And yet she was content to pair off with this dull young adventurer in the tarnished lace! It was, he supposed, the sort of thing to be expected of a sex that all philosophy had taught him to regard as the maddest part of a mad species.

Every human society must of necessity be composed of several strata. You may disturb it temporarily into an amorphous whole by a revolution such as this; but only temporarily. Soon out of the chaos which is all that you and your kind can ever produce, order must be restored or life will perish; and with the restoration of order comes the restoration of the various strata necessary to organized society. Those that were yesterday at the top may in the new order of things find themselves dispossessed without any benefit to the whole. Book 3, Chapter 15

Talking of air, Mr. Tenby, I think you are a chemist. Have you paid attention to the recent experiments on the composition and resolution of air? Not? I am surprised at it; they are well worth your most serious consideration. It is now pretty well ascertained that inhaling gases is the cure for all kinds of diseases. People are beginning to talk of the gas-cure, as they did of the water-cure. The great foreign chemist, Professor Scaramouch, has the credit of the discovery. The effects are astounding, quite astounding; and there are several remarkable coincidences. You know medicines are always unpleasant, and so these gases are always fetid. The Professor cures by stenches, and has brought his science to such perfection that he actually can classify them. There are six elementary stenches, and these spread into a variety of subdivisions? What do you say, Mr. Reding? Distinctive? Yes, there is something very distinctive in smells. But what is most gratifying of all, and is the great coincidence I spoke of, his ultimate resolution of fetid gases assigns to them the very same precise number as is given to existing complaints in the latest treatises on pathology. Each complaint has its gas. And, what is still more singular, an exhausted receiver is a specific for certain desperate disorders.

The inevitable, tragic corollary of civilization is populace.

They are just governing classes, and I never heard of governing classes that had eyes for anything but their own profit.

If I think about it, there's almost no one we know who hasn't contributed in some way. The logo--- Scaramouche with his sword inside an ice cream swirl--- was done by a local graphic designer, the husband of the director of the village crèche. The sewing lady across the street made the cushions for the bench inside the shop. We get the three-liter bidons of fruity olive oil for our rosemary-olive oil-pine nut ice cream at the butcher, and the saffron, bien sûr, from Didier and Martine in Reillane. Mr. Simondi, whose farm is down the hill near Marion, has promised to hand-pick our melons for sorbet when the time comes. Angela has become our gardener in chief, making sure the terrace is full of bright spring flowers.

Huh!" said he. "Dieu de Dien! But you are frank." "An unpopular form of service among fools, I know." "Well, I am not a fool," said Binet. "That is why I am frank. I pay you the compliment of assuming intelligence in you, M. Binet.

To do what you imply would require nothing short of divine intervention. You must change man, not systems. Can you and our vapouring friends of the Literary Chamber of Rennes, or any other learned society of France, devise a system of government that has never yet been tried? Surely not. And can they say of any system tried that it proved other than a failure in the end? My dear Philippe, the future is to be read with certainty only in the past. Ab actu ad posse valet consecutio. Man never changes. He is always greedy, always acquisitive, always vile. I am speaking of Man in the bulk.

That is the lesson that I have learnt to-night. By an act of betrayal I begot unknown to me a son who, whilst as ignorant as myself of our relationship, has come to be the evil genius of my life, to cross and thwart me, and finally to help to pull me down in ruin. It is just—poetically just. My full and resigned acceptance of that fact is the only atonement I can offer you.

It is the day of the Dantons, and the Marats, the day of the rabble. The reins of government will be tossed to the populace, or else the populace, drunk with the conceit with which the Dantons and the Marats have filled it, will seize the reins by force. Chaos must follow, and a despotism of brutes and apes, a government of the whole by its lowest parts. It cannot endure, because unless a nation is ruled by its best elements it must wither and decay.

At least you will admit—you have, in fact, admitted it—that we could not be worse governed than we are?" "That is not the point. The point is should we be better governed if we replaced the present ruling class by another? Without some guarantee of that I should be the last to lift a finger to effect a change. And what guarantees can you give?

The money-changers in Paris who hold the bonds in the national debt, seeing the parlous financial condition of the State, tremble at the thought that it may lie in the power of a single man to cancel the debt by bankruptcy. To secure themselves they are burrowing underground to overthrow a state and build upon its ruins a new one in which they shall be the masters. And to accomplish this they inflame the people.

I am ready to admit that the present government is execrable, unjust, tyrannical—what you will; but I beg you to look ahead, and to see that the government for which it is aimed at exchanging it may be infinitely worse.

To tolerate it, in however slight a degree, to show leniency, however leniently disposed, would entail having recourse to still harsher measures to-morrow.

What a man dares to do, he should dare to confess—unless he is a coward.

Sospechaban de él que no tenía corazón. (R. Sabatini. Scaramouche)