The Anchor Book of French Quotations [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION The fact that this book contains a profusion of what might be called "literary gems" and "witty sayings"—a reflection of permanent elements of French literary taste—is incidental to the compiler's primary purpose. This purpose was to quote short passages that the reader of French literature will often encounter, either repeated verbatim or alluded to in the works of subsequent French writers. More than most literatures, the French is characterized by a continuity of tradition, one writer echoing another over the centuries. Many of Pascal's Pensées, for example, are attempts to answer remarks by Montaigne, and are in turn explicitly or implicitly cited or contradicted by countless writers down to Paul Valéry. The ability to recognize such allusions is often essential to the correct interpretation of a text, and at the very least adds enjoyment to reading. Every French writer expects a literate reader to be more or less familiar with these texts. This is particularly true of the passages from classical authors. Others have obtained a degree of currency because they were singled out by distinguished critics, as the condensed essence of a given author's conceptions. Still others have, under various circumstances, caught the fancy of the public for reasons that may vary widely: aptness of expression, delightful wit, biting irony —and also involuntary comedy, as when an author, carried away by his rhetoric, falls into a burlesque of his own style, or when a poignant passage lends itself to derisive misapplication. The texts cited range from some of the earliest extant French writings to some of the most recent, although living authors have been deliberately excluded. They reflect less the compiler's personal preferences than his opinion as to what [v]