"Moliere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... throat to be cut by anyone. He then explained his conduct to the senate, saying that he was the victim of a malady which, at times, rendered him incapable of standing. During the attacks of this disorder "he felt shocks in his limbs, became giddy, and at last lost consciousness." Moliere was the victim of epilepsy; so also was Petrarch, Flaubert, Charles V., Handel, St. Paul, Peter the Great, and Dostoieffsky; Paganini, Mozart, Schiller, Alfieri, Pascal, Richelieu, Newton, and Swift were the victims of diseases epileptoid ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... petty German prince must create in his domains a servile imitation of the stiff parks of Versailles,—the days of powdered wigs and long cues,—when French ballet-dancers gave the tone, and French actors strutted on every stage,—when Boileau was the great canon of criticism, and Racine and Moliere perpetuated in tragedy and comedy a pseudo-classicism. They are far, those times when Frederick the Great wrote French at which Voltaire laughed, and could find no better occupation for his leisure hours at Sans-Souci than the discussion of the materialistic philosophy of the Encyclopedists, while ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... was presented with an epitaph by an indifferent poet, on the celebrated Moliere. "I would to God," said he, "that Moliere had ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... the 'Preface to The Good Natur'd Man', where he 'hopes that too much refinement will not banish humour and character from our's, as it has already done from the French theatre. Indeed the French comedy is now become so very elevated and sentimental, that it has not only banished humour and 'Moliere' from the stage, but it ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... through the device of Mazarin, he was proud of the genius that shed lustre on the French nation. Corneille and Racine wrote tragedies of classic fame, and Moliere, the greatest of all comedians, could amuse the wit of every visitor to the court. Louis gave banquets at Versailles in honour of the dramatists he patronized, and had their plays performed in a setting so brilliant that ambition might well be satisfied. Tales of royal ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... of you who have read with attention (none of us can read with too much attention), Moliere's most perfect work, the Misanthrope, must remember Celimene's description of her lovers, and her excellent reason for being unable to regard with any favour, "notre grand flandrin de vicomte,—depuis que je l'ai vu, trois quarts d'heure durant, cracher dans un puits pour faire des ronds." That ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... content myself with remarking that in real life typical characters are "watered down," so to speak; and all these Dandins and Podkoleosins actually exist among us every day, but in a diluted form. I will just add, however, that Georges Dandin might have existed exactly as Moliere presented him, and probably does exist now and then, though rarely; and so I will end this scientific examination, which is beginning to look like a newspaper criticism. But for all this, the question remains,—what are the novelists ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... itself. When a man is melancholy, it comes from his stomach. To be gay and cheery, to have your spirits clear and fresh, you have nothing more to do than to eat heartily and have a good digestion. Moliere could not have written such glorious comedies if he had fed upon sour krout and old peas, instead of the woodcock, grouse, and truffles which fell to him from King Louis's table. Man is only a ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... hundred men assembled to insult one of his friends, and he attacked them, killed two, mortally wounded seven, and dispersed all the rest. He died at Paris in 1655, struck by a huge beam falling into the street. As an author he was strangely underrated by his fellow-countrymen. Moliere was the only man who really appreciated him. For some centuries his works have been more esteemed in England than in France. Many English writers, from Dean Swift to Samuel Butler, the author of "Erewhon," have been inspired by his "Voyage to the Moon," the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... malcontents would have anything but an appetite for the theatrical feast set before them in the shape of the "Non-Juror," and would prove none the less disgusted because the play happened to be an adaptation of Moliere's "Tartuffe." As the latter comedy depicts a self-indulgent, crawling hypocrite of the worst type, and is an eloquent sermon against sham, it may be imagined that the Jacobites were not over enthusiastic when they learned that the moral ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... the painter, was apprenticed to a pastry-cook; Moliere, the author, to an upholsterer; and Guido, the famous painter of Aurora, was sent to ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... to Mrs Villiers, and then Madame would discover his baseness in ruining the girl. M. Vandeloup, however, surveyed the whole situation calmly, and was not ill-pleased at the position of affairs. Life was beginning to bore him in Melbourne, and he wanted to be amused. Here was a comedy worthy of Moliere—a jealous woman, a rich ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... generally. It is derived from "Gens Francorum," and dates from Crusading days when the French played the leading part. Hence the Lingua Franca, the Levantine jargon, of which Moliere has left ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... truth, propositions, which cannot be proved except from each other, are often admitted, when expressed in different language, without other proof. Frequently a proposition is presented in abstract terms as a proof of the same in concrete, as, in Moliere's parody, 'L'opium endormit parcequ'il a une vertu soporifique.' So, some qualities of a thing selected arbitrarily are termed its nature or essence, and then reasoned from as though not able to be counteracted by any of the rest. ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... Moliere Doctors, will tell you: "Enthusiasms, Self-sacrifice, Heaven, Hell and suchlike: yes, all that was true enough for old stupid times; all that used to be true: but we have changed all that, nous avons change tout cela!" ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... the French have it; at least Moliere and Corneille—whom I have been reading by and large of late, having read all the new things I could get hold of-are continually having their personages etonned. Or, I feel like Dominie Sampson, and say, "Pro-di-gi-ous!" Not as he said it to Meg ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... the greatest lovers of letters who have ever lived—Dr. Johnson, for example, and Thomas de Quincey and Carlyle—have cared no more for first editions than I do for Brussels sprouts. You may love Moliere with a love surpassing your love of woman without any desire to beggar yourself in Paris by purchasing early copies of the plays. You may be perfectly content to read Walton's Lives in an edition of 1905, if there is one; and as for Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver and the Vicar of Wakefield—are ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... Girl"—was essentially and vitally an uneducated one. It was headed, in literary power, by Wordsworth; but the first pure example of its mind and manner of Art, as opposed to the erudite and artificial schools, will be found, so far as I know, in Moliere's song: j'aime ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... on very well, and working hard at French. Je suis allant a commencer translater une chose par Moliere le prochain term si je suis bon. There's a howling row on in the house just now. Bickers got nobbled and sacked the other night, and shoved in the boot-box, and nobody knows who did it. I've a notion, but I'm bound to keep it dark for the sake of a mutual friend. It would be as ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... and songs, of which the best known are Phyllis and Chloris. His only child was the witty and profligate Catherine S., mistress of James II., who created her Countess of Dorset. Bellamira and The Mulberry Garden, founded respectively on Terence and Moliere, are his best plays. His prose in pamphlets and essays ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... rank or fortune On domestic management depends the preservation of their fortune Spirit of party can degrade the character of a nation Tastes may change The anti-Austrian party, discontented and vindictive They say you live very poorly here, Moliere True nobility, gentlemen, consists in giving proofs of it We must have obedience, and no reasoning What do young women stand in need of?—Mothers! "Would be a pity," she said, "to stop when so fairly on the road" Your swords have rusted in ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Court Memoirs of France • David Widger
... interest not disproportioned to their size. They have, however, a little of both for the student, in reference to the extension of the novel kind. For Cleon is rather like a "fictionising" of an inferior play of Moliere's time; and Hattige, with its privateering Chevalier de Malte for a hero and its Turkish heroine who coolly remarks "L'infidelite a des charmes," might have been better if the author had known how to make it so. Both these books have, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... fellows and ourselves. In proportion as these expressions are the forms of universal truths, of facts common to all nations or appreciable by all intellects, the literature which sets them forth is permanently good and true. Hence the universality and immortality of Homer, Shakspere, Cervantes, Moliere. But in proportion as these expressions are the forms of individual, peculiar truths, such as fleeting fashions or idiosyncrasies, the literature is ephemeral. Hence tragedy never grows old, for it arises from ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... matters as though I had no personal interest in them. This is not so difficult as the public might imagine. Few works conduce to much vanity; much labor conduces to great diffidence. This observation accounts for the study of their own works made by Corneille, Moliere, and other great writers; if it is impossible to equal them in their fine conceptions, we may try to imitate them ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... edition), Voltaire averred that the Mask was the son of Anne of Austria and Mazarin, an elder brother of Louis XIV. Changes were rung on this note: the Mask was the actual King, Louis XIV. was a bastard. Others held that he was James, Duke of Monmouth—or Moliere! In 1770 Heiss identified him with Mattioli, the Mantuan intriguer, and especially after the appearance of the book by Roux Fazaillac, in 1801, that was the ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... imitators, and enthusiasts in France is as numerous as that of other countries. The list of great authors inspired by Horace includes such names as Montaigne, "The French Horace," Malherbe, Regnier, Boileau, La Fontaine, Corneille, Racine, Moliere, Voltaire, Jean Baptiste Rousseau, Le Brun, Andre ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... comedy which we generally find in Shakespeare.—Whether the analysis here given be just or not, the spirit of his comedies is evidently quite distinct from that of the authors above mentioned, as it is in its essence the same with that of Cervantes, and also very frequently of Moliere, though he was more systematic in his extravagance than Shakespeare. Shakespeare's comedy is of a pastoral and poetical cast. Folly is indigenous to the soil, and shoots out with native, happy, unchecked luxuriance. Absurdity has every encouragement ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... celebrated ancients, I venture to oppose singly the matchless Moliere, as the most consummate master of comedy that former or latter ages have produced. He was not content with painting obvious and common characters, but set himself closely to examine the numberless varieties of human ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton
... which caused Pascal to write the "Letters" was of a supercilious kind, and what he willed to say in them led to the development of all those qualities that are summed up in the French term l'esprit. Voltaire declared that the best comedies of Moliere n'ont pas plus de sel que les premieres lettres. "Vos maximes," Pascal assures the Jesuit Fathers, "ont je ne sais quoi de divertissant, qui rejouit toujours le monde," and they lose nothing of that character in his handling of them, so much ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... received) competent applause is Tom Thumb, or the Tragedy of Tragedies, a following of course of the Rehearsal, but full of humour and spirit. The most successful of his other dramatic works were the Mock Doctor and the Miser, adaptations of Moliere's famous pieces. His undoubted connection with the stage, and the fact of the contemporary existence of a certain Timothy Fielding, helped suggestions of less dignified occupations as actor, booth-keeper, and so forth; but these have long been ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... such fine, such brilliant stuffs, such elegant furniture, and when are made such rich porcelains, must needs be the age of periphrase and circumlocution. We must try, therefore, to coin a new word in place of the comic expression which Moliere used; since the language of this great man, as a contemporary author has said, is too free for ladies who find gauze too thick for their garments. But people of the world know, as well as the learned, how the Greeks ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... figure, soft dark eyes, and hair that just missed being black, a clear complexion and fine color, and a small line of mustache. As to manners he was really charming, and so well-read that Mr. Winthrop Adams took to him at once. He was conversant with Voltaire and Rousseau, the plays of Racine and Moliere, and the causes that had led to the French Revolution, and had been in Paris through the famous "Hundred Days." Of course he was ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... prose. Fiction, from the earlier ages, intended to convey Moral Instruction. Opinion of Aristotle defended against that of Plato. Morality in mediaeval Romance. Criticism of Mr. Frederic Harrison. Opinion of Moliere. Yet French novels usually immoral, and why. Remarks on Popery. To be avoided. Morality of Richardson and of Sir Walter Scott. Impropriety re-introduced by Charlotte Bronte. Unwillingness of Lecturer to dwell on this Topic. ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... encounter the jealousy and hatred the great poet and critic of Weimar seemed to have called forth. In Walt Whitman we in America have known an American author who was an American martyr in a more literal sense than any of the men named by the great German. More than Heine, or Rousseau, or Moliere, or Byron, was Whitman a victim of the literary Philistinism of his country and times; but, fortunately for himself, his was a nature so large, tolerant, and self-sufficing that his martyrdom sat very lightly upon him. His ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... Don Juan became such a pet that the world could not bear his damnation. It reconciled him sentimentally to God in a second version, and clamored for his canonization for a whole century, thus treating him as English journalism has treated that comic foe of the gods, Punch. Moliere's Don Juan casts back to the original in point of impenitence; but in piety he falls off greatly. True, he also proposes to repent; but in what terms? "Oui, ma foi! il faut s'amender. Encore vingt ou trente ans de cette vie-ci, et puis nous songerons a nous." After Moliere ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... solemnly. "This makes her hateful and lovable at the same moment. She is determined to be an actress. She never speaks of Robert, and she shuts herself up in her room reciting Marivaux and Moliere. The d'Alchingens have invited her to Hadley next Saturday. They encourage her theatrical ideas. And why? They wish her to lose caste. She is an Archduchess, Sara, an Alberian Archduchess. What a ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... of these two critics is typified by Moliere's famous cook, who must have been a singularly honest, independent, and intelligent person, since he chose in all cases to abide by her decision, and not with an altogether unsatisfactory result to Mankind! Such cooks are not to be found in these days—certainly not in England; but he is an unlucky ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... that Rogers caught the mould of his blank verse from the copy rather than from the model. In the matter of style—as Flaubert has said—the second-bests are often the better teachers. More is to be learned from La Fontaine and Gautier than from Moliere and Victor Hugo. ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... be told that France stands pre-eminent in dramatic excellence; that Corneille, Racine, and Moliere, were contemporaries of Bossuet, Massillon, and Boileau; that the tragedies of Voltaire were the highest effort of his vast and varied genius? Germany, albeit the last-born in the literary family of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... MOLIERE, that celebrated Dramatick Writer, was, by him, intended to reprove a vain, fantastical, conceited and preposterous Humour, which about that time prevailed very much in France. It had the desir'd good Effect, and conduced a great deal towards rooting out a Taste so unreasonable and ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... forward to enrich by contrast the serious parts of the glorious genius of Shakspeare." We never understood or imagined there was an Anacreon among the aldermen, a Chaucer in the common council, or a Moliere at the Mansion-house. We have now discovered the Peter Lauriate of the City—the poet of the Poultry. Who, in the face of the above sentence, can deny his right to these titles, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... received by the judiciary with a frown, by the other spectators with a murmur of applause, and by the beautiful daughter of the house of Mancini with one of those bewitching smiles which have been celebrated in the sonnets of Benserade, Corneille, Moliere, St. Evremont, ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... Players," as they chose to call themselves, developed no little skill and craftsmanship in presenting one form and another of classic and semi-classic play. "Romeo and Juliet," with few properties of any kind, "The Learned Ladies" of Moliere, Sheridan's "The Rivals," and the "Elektra" of Sophocles were all given. Considerable ability of one kind and another was developed, the group including two actresses of subsequent repute on the American stage, one of whom was Stephanie Platow. There were ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... Aristophanes; Rome her Juvenal; Spain has had her Cervantes; France her Rabelais, her Moliere, her Voltaire; Germany her Jean Paul, her Heine; England her Swift, her Thackeray; and America has her Lowell. By the side of all those great masters of satire, though kept somewhat in the rear by provincialism of style and subject, the author of the "Biglow Papers" ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... entities and quiddities, nominalism and realism, free-will and necessity, with which sort of learning he used to stuff his sermons and astound his learned hearers, the bumpkins. They never doubted that it was all true, but were apt to say with the old woman in Moliere: "He speaks so well that I ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... natural religion, a historic monograph on the Vaudois, some outlined letters on Paris, literature, and the general police system of the realm of letters. In his youthful enthusiasms, Honore de Balzac shifted from Beaumarchais to Moliere, from Voltaire to Rousseau, from Racine to Corneille, and, contrary to his temperament, he drew up plans for violent and pathetic dramas, suited to the ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... basket-work box. There is such a thing as civilized art, but its civility lies in adventitious and subsidiary qualities—in the means, not in the end. It seems to me we do mean something when we say that Phidias, Sophocles, and Aristophanes, Raphael, Racine, Moliere, Poussin, Milton, Wren, Jane Austen and Mozart are highly civilized artists, and that the creators of the Gothic cathedrals and the author of the Chanson de Roland, Villon, Webster, Rembrandt, Blake, Wordsworth, Emily Bronte, Whitman, Turner, Wagner and the Congolese fetish-makers ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... play was given by Louis XIV. It was acted before him at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, on February 4, 1670, but was never represented in Paris, and was only printed after Moliere's death. It is one of the weakest plays of Moliere, upon whom unfortunately now rested the whole responsibility of the court entertainments. His attack upon astrology ...
— The Magnificent Lovers (Les Amants magnifiques) • Moliere
... Moliere said that reasoning banished reason. It is possible also that the progress toward perfection we are so proud of is only a pretentious imperfection. Duty seems now to be more negative than positive; it means lessening evil rather than actual good; it is a generous discontent, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... single-handed product of some Brownie, some Familiar, some unseen collaborator, whom I keep locked in a back garret, while I get all the praise and he but a share (which I cannot prevent him getting) of the pudding. I am an excellent adviser, something like Moliere's servant. I pull back and I cut down; and I dress the whole in the best words and sentences that I can find and make; I hold the pen, too; and I do the sitting at the table, which is about the worst of it; and when ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that such distinctions are necessary to them, but that they are necessary to the distinctions; after which the oi polloi are enrolled as they can find interest. Something very like an admission of this is contained in an inscription on the statue of Moliere, which stands in the vestibule of the hall of the Academy, which frankly says, "Though we are not necessary to your glory, you are necessary to ours." He was excluded from the forty, by intrigue, on account of his profession being that of a player. Shakspeare, himself, would ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... master by proxy. This idea gazes wide-eyed down a fascinating vista of speculation. Who, for instance, was Lincoln's silent partner? the power behind the throne of Charlemagne? Buddha's better self? Who were the secret commanders of Grant, Wellington, and Caesar? Who was Moliere's hidden prompter? the conductor of the orchestra called Beethoven? the ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... by common people. A good bootmaker will not make high heels now, even if paid double price to do so. Ladies—that is, real ladies—now wear flat-soled shoes and boots, a la Cinderella. For morning walking, boots or high Moliere ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... he sought for one—one having reference to Estelle. He took with him a propitiatory little volume containing translations of well-known poems by one Amiel. Estelle was regarded as being immensely interested in French; she daily translated themes back and forth from her own language into that of Moliere. These singularly neat and exact productions of Amiel's should delight—and ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... escape the taint of degrading Plautus to the status of a petty moralizer[29]. In particular, he lauds the Aul unreservedly as a chef d'oeuvre of character delineation and pronounces it immeasurably superior to Moliere's imitation, "L'Avare."[30] This whole critique, while interesting, falls into the prevailing trend of imputing to Plautus far too high a plane ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... is that more than one sovereign and more than one age have found their purest glory to consist. Virgil, Horace, and Livy contributed quite as much as the foundation of the empire to shed lustre on the reign of Augustus. Bossuet, Pascal, and Fenelon, Corneille, Racine, Boileau, Moliere, and La Fontaine, count for quite as much as his great warriors and his able administrators in regard to the splendor of the age of Louis XIV. People are quite right to set this estimate upon the heroes ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... in Mlle. de Scuderi's Clelie (1654, Vol. I, p. 399), and reproduced in the English folio edition of 1678. This fantastic map, which is said to have been suggested by Chapelain, aroused unbounded ridicule. In scene iv of Moliere's Les Precieuses Ridicules (1659), Cathos cries, 'Je m'en vais gager qu'ils n'ont jamais vu la carte de Tendre, et que Billets-Doux, Petits-Soins, Billets-Galante, et Jolis-Vers sont des terres inconnues ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... sorrowful books, only Aristophanes and Lucian, Horace, Rabelais, Moliere, Voltaire's novels, 'Gil Blas,' 'Don Quixote,' Fielding, a play or two of Shakespeare, a volume or so of Swift, Prior's Poems, and Sterne—that divine Sterne! And a Latin Grammar and Virgil for you, little ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... France were few and slighting, the wickedest and most amusing being by Theodore Hook. He quotes with glee the author's complacent record that she was compared to Moliere by the Parisians, and that she had seen in a 'poetry-book' ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... begun to tell me as soon as I could hear with understanding. Another came from the bedchamber of Philip II of Spain—a grand high clock that had tolled the hours in that great hall beyond my door. A little thing, in a case of carved ivory, that ticked on a table near my bed, Moliere had given to one of her ancestors, and there were many ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... an enthusiast is always a bore. 'Les facheux,' of Moliere are just enthusiasts. Well, sir, in one word, I was a natural philosopher—very small, but earnest; and, in due course, my studies brought me to the wonders of the human body. I studied the outlines of anatomy in books, and plates, and prepared figures; ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... of French books given place in his shelves was strictly limited. He was completely indifferent to those works which it is fashionable to praise. "The broad laugh of Rabelais," and "the deep comedy of Moliere," did not succeed in diverting him, and the antipathy he felt against these farces was so great that he did not hesitate to liken them, in the point of art, to the ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... it to support so elaborate a structure of paradoxical rhetoric. It must be taken, therefore, as something serious in the main; and if so taken, and read by the light reflected from Mr. Whistler's more characteristically brilliant canvases, it may not improbably recall a certain phrase of Moliere's which at once passed into a proverb—"Vous etes orfevre, M. Josse." That worthy tradesman, it will be remembered, was of opinion that nothing could be so well calculated to restore a drooping young lady to mental and physical health as the present of a handsome set of jewels. Mr. Whistler's ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... to excuse her by citing the example of Moliere. Just at that moment it came to pass that, while climbing the ladder to get a book, she upset a whole shelf-row. There was a heavy crash; and Mademoiselle Prefere, being, of course, a very delicate person, almost fainted. Jeanne quickly followed the books to the foot ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... at about twelve miles' distance, allured her to reverie, and bred within her thoughts not too deep for tears. The books which exercised most power over her at this period were Shakspeare, Cervantes, and Moliere—all three students of the 'natural history of man,' and inspired by fact, not fancy; reconstructing the world from materials which they collected on every side, not spinning from the desires of their ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... drawing-room: I like them better and better the more I see of them. When there is company there is a whist table for the gentlemen. Dumont read out one evening one of Corneille's plays, "Le Florentin," which is beautiful, and was beautifully read. We asked for one of Moliere, but he said to Lord Lansdowne that it was impossible to read Moliere aloud without a quicker eye than he had pour de certains propos: however, they went to the library and brought out at last as odd a choice ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... talent, M. Henry d'E——, had offered me a refuge in rooms which he occupied in the Rue Richelieu; these rooms adjoining the Theatre Francais, were on the first floor of a house which, like M. Grevy's residence, had an exit into the Rue Fontaine Moliere. ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... by some fad or 'cause,' which is a poor substitute for love of country. The man who has no prejudices in favour of his own family and his own country is generally an unamiable creature. So we need not condemn Moliere for saying, 'L'ami du genre humain n'est pas du tout mon fait,' nor Brunetiere for declaring that 'Ni la nature ni l'histoire n'ont en effet voulu que les hommes fussent tous freres.' But French Neo-catholicism, a bourgeois movement directed against all ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... have no objection,—but wouldn't it lower one's dignity? No, no, Moliere used to read his plays to his servants, so I believe all's regular.—Come, ...
— The Dramatist; or Stop Him Who Can! - A Comedy, in Five Acts • Frederick Reynolds
... than arranging theatricals and acting herself. She rooted up some charity as an excuse for giving a theatrical performance, and obtained the theater of the Conservatoire and the promise of the Empress's presence. She chose two plays, one of Musset and the other, "l'Esclave," of Moliere—and asked me to take ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... whim of veering fashion, that has made us turn our back upon the larger, more various, and more romantic art of yore. A photographic exactitude in dialogue is now the exclusive fashion; but even in the ablest hands it tells us no more—I think it even tells us less—than Moliere, wielding his artificial medium, has told to us and to all time of Alceste or Orgon, Dorine or Chrysale. The historical novel is forgotten. Yet truth to the conditions of man's nature and the conditions of man's life, the truth of literary art, is free ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... round the name of Ausonius. Now in later history we find every important French cycle tending to be followed by one in England: as Chaucer followed Jean de Meung; Shakespeare, Ronsard and the Pleyade; Dryden and Pope, Moliere and Racine; Wordsworth and Shelley, the Revolution. And we have seen China wake in 420; and we have noted, in the first of these lectures, the strange fact that whenever China 'gets busy,' we see a sort of reflexion of it among the Celts of ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... swindler cossets his dupe. A mother is not so tender nor so solicitous for a beloved daughter as the practitioner of tartuferie for his milch cow. What brilliant success attends the performance of Tartufe behind the closed doors of a home! It is worth more than friendship. Moliere died too soon; he would otherwise have shown us the misery of Orgon, wearied by his family, harassed by his children, regretting the blandishments of Tartufe, and thinking to himself, "Ah, ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... leered politely as he listened to Ratcliffe's reply, which showed invariable ignorance of common literature, art, and history. The climax of his triumph came one evening when Ratcliffe unluckily, tempted by some allusion to Moliere which he thought he understood, made reference to the unfortunate influence of that great man on the religious opinions of his time. Jacobi, by a flash of inspiration, divined that he had confused Moliere with Voltaire, and assuming a manner of extreme ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... and wave him, and ebry time de wind blow, I been-a-tremble, and drap down in de bushes," because, being between two fires, he doubted whether friend or foe would see his signal first. And so on, with a succession of tricks beyond Moliere, of acts of caution, foresight, patient cunning, which were listened to with infinite gusto and perfect comprehension by ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... invitation—M. Le Comte de Lusace will be there. This Count was the brother of the Dauphine, and this mention of him was deservedly thought impertinent. The King said, wittily enough, "Lambert and Moliere will be there." She scarcely ever spoke of the Cardinal de Bernis after his dismissal from ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... together elaborate the scheme of a new work. Then Erckmann writes it. Chatrian corrects it—and sometimes puts it in the fire!" One at least of their plays enjoys equal popularity with the novel from which it is drawn. To have witnessed L'Ami Fritz at Moliere's house in the last decade of the nineteenth century was an experience to remember. That consummate artist, Got, was at his very best—if the superlative in such a case is applicable—as the good old Rabbi. No less enchanting was Mlle. Reichenbach, the doyenne of the Comedie ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... their lesson. He made mistakes, was neither broad-minded nor profound in attainments, was occasionally unjust; but he showed readers why they should praise or blame; taught them appreciation of his greater friends Moliere and Racine; and pointed out to authors what their purpose should be. With a greater creative power seeking self-expression, he might have accomplished less in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... and Anne's Pere Tellier was called Sarah Jennings. However, there is an outline of incipient irony, which fifty years later was to turn to philosophy, in the literature of the age, and the Protestant Tartuffe is unmasked by Swift just in the same way as the Catholic Tartuffe is denounced by Moliere. Although the England of the period quarrels and fights France, she imitates her and draws enlightenment from her; and the light on the facade of England is French light. It is a pity that Anne's reign lasted but twelve years, or the English would not hesitate to call ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... avoid speaking of professional matters. They talk politics, discuss the fashions and the theatres, they tell anecdotes, they write books better than professional authors do; there is a vast difference between the doctors of to-day and those of Moliere— ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... abounding with rank intriguing knaves, who, like the slaves in Plautus and Terence, were always on the watch to further any wickedness; while Calabria furnished the booby Giangurgello with his grotesque nose. Moliere, it has been ascertained, discovered in the Italian theatre at Paris his "Medecin malgre Lui," his "Etourdi," his "L'Avare," and his "Scapin." Milan offered a pimp in Brighella; Florence, an ape of fashion in Gelsomino. These and other Pantomimic characters, and some ludicrous ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... in folio as they should always be found; Boswell's Johnson, of course, but Blackstone's "Commentaries" also; Plutarch's "Lives" and Increase Mather's witches; all of Fielding in four stately quarto volumes; Sterne, stained and shabby; Congreve, in red morocco, richly gilt; Moliere, pocket size, in an English translation; Gibbon ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens
... too much for Dr. Hirsch, and the battle began in earnest. They hurled at each other titles of books in every language, names of every drug known and unknown to the faculty. The scene was more laughable than terrific, and was very much like one from "Moliere." Jack and his mother escaped to the piazza, Where Labassandre was already trying his voice. The winged inhabitants of the forest twittered in terror; the peacocks in the neighboring chateau answered by those alarmed cries with which they greet the ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... live according to my fancy; to work as I wish and in my own way; to do nothing if I wish it; to dream of a beautiful future; to think of you and to know you are happy; to have as ladylove the Julie of Rousseau; to have La Fontaine and Moliere as friends, Racine for a master, and Pere-Lachaise to walk to,—oh! if ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... as a Count, is of course directly derived from Les Precieuses Ridicules, first performed 18 November, 1659, and Isabella is a close copy of Cathos and Magdelon. Flecknoe had already adapted Moliere in The Damoiselles a la Mode, unacted (4to 1667); and seven years later than Mrs. Behn, Shadwell, in his fine comedy, Bury Fair (1689), drew largely from the same source. His mock noble is a French peruke-maker, La Roch, who marries Lady Fantast's affected daughter. Miller, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... had heard of Moore, whom he called "Tommy." I believe he had never heard of Keats or Tennyson; certainly he was quite unacquainted with their poems. He had a feeble, incipient knowledge of French, and occasionally read a page of Moliere, with an unimaginable pronunciation; but he knew nothing really of any modern literature. On the other hand, his knowledge of the Greek and Latin classics was more intimate than that possessed by any other teacher I had ever known. He was a thorough, old-fashioned scholar, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... people were always surrounded by a throng of servants. First came the valet de chambre, who was expected to know a little of everything, from shaving and wig-making to skill in country sports, and had as much experience in all town matters as a servant out of Terence or Moliere. Last came the negro slave, who waited on my lord or my lady, with the silver collar of ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... not consider it important that a child should have juvenile books and Margaret's light reading consisted of Shakspere, Cervantes, and Moliere. She gives an interesting account of her discovery of Shakspere at the age of eight. Foraging for entertainment on a dismal winter Sunday afternoon, she took down a volume of Shakspere and was soon lost in the adventures and misadventures of Romeo ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... like all consultations, grim and solemn. Doctors no longer wear the huge wigs of Moliere's day, but they still assume the same portentous gravity of priests of Isis or astrologers, bristling with cabalistic formulae accompanied by movements of the head which lack only the pointed cap of an earlier age to produce a laughable effect. On this occasion ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... vein, natural to a "Chauvinist"; 'Ruines et Fantomes (1873). Les Femmes de la Revolution (1898)' contains a great number of portraits, studies, and criticisms, partly belonging to political, partly to literary, history. To the same category belong: Moliere, sa Vie et ses OEuvres (1873); Peintres et Sculpteurs Contemporains, and T. B. Carpeaux (1875); L'Art et les Artistes Contemporains (1876)', and others. Quite different from the above, and in another phase of thought, are: 'Voyages d'un Parisien ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... oblivion dulled the memory of the enormous mass of talk. Sir John thinks we should read Confucius, the Hindoo religious poetry, some Persian poetry, Thucydides, Tacitus, Cicero, Homer, Virgil, a little—a very little—Voltaire, Moliere, Sheridan, Locke, Berkeley, George Lewes, Hume, Shakspere, Bunyan, Spenser, Pope, Fielding, Macaulay, Marivaux—Alas, is there any need to pursue the catalogue to the bitter end? Need I mention Gibbon, or Froude, or Lingard, or Freeman, or the novelists? To my mind ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... heat, and sooterkins of wit, Next, o'er his books his eyes began to roll, In pleasing memory of all he stole, How here he sipped, how there he plundered snug, And sucked all o'er, like an industrious bug. Here lay poor Fletcher's half-eat scenes, and here The frippery of crucified Moliere; There hapless Shakespeare, yet of Tibbald sore, Wished he had blotted for himself before. The rest on outside merit but presume, Or serve (like other fools) to fill a room; Such with their shelves as due proportion hold, Or their fond parents dressed in red and ...
— English Satires • Various
... may except the Banquet of Xenophon and the Dialogues of Lucian?" What! has he forgotten Aristophanes? Has he forgotten Plautus! No—but their pleasantry is not excellent to his taste; and he tacitly agrees with Horace in censuring the "coarse railleries and cold jests" of the Great Original of Moliere! ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is not enough to say. I think it certain, further, that if we take the chief poetical names of the Continent since the death of Moliere, and, omitting Goethe, confront the remaining names with that of Wordsworth, the result is the same. Let us take Klopstock,[353] Lessing,[354] Schiller, Uhland,[355] Rueckert,[356] and Heine[357] for ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... regular communicant of the Church of England, if only he loved strongly, it certainly did matter to his relations and even under some circumstances to his whole neighbourhood. Sometimes indeed, like some father in Moliere, I ignored the lover's feelings altogether and even refused to admit that a trace of the devil, perhaps a trace of colour, may lend piquancy, especially if the connection be ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... Courtille, and in the year 1693. Another biographer asserts that he was born two years later, and in the Marais;—of respectable parents, of course. Think of the talent that our two countries produced about this time: Marlborough, Villars, Mandrin, Turpin, Boileau, Dryden, Swift, Addison, Moliere, Racine, Jack Sheppard, and Louis Cartouche,—all famous within the same twenty years, and ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... He was simply pushed out. George Sand had a remarkable gift for bringing out the characteristics of the persons with whom she had any intercourse. This Pagello, thanks to his adventure with her, has become in the eyes of the world a personage as comic as one of Moliere's characters. ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... In Avalon, Isle of Dreams, In vast contentment at last, With every grief done away, While Chaucer and Shakespeare wait, And Moliere hangs on his words, And Cervantes not far off Listens and smiles apart, With that incomparable drawl He ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... further of Sainte-Beuve's Babylonish dialect), this far outpasses the raillery of Sterne's Sentimental Journey; it might be Scarron without his grossness. Nay, I do not know but that Moliere in his lighter mood would not have said of it, as of Cyrano de Bergerac's best—'This is mine.' Richelieu himself was not more complete when he wrote to the princess waiting for him in the Palais Royal—'Stay there, my queen, to charm the scullion lads.' At the same time, Charles Edward's ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac
... attach our old [Greek: tuphlas elpidas] (and the practice of instilling them) to that medical science in which Prometheus boasted himself proficient? I had thought the 'faculty' dealt in fears, on the contrary, and scared you into obedience: but I know most about the doctors in Moliere. However the joyous truth is—must be, that you are better, and if one could transport you quietly to Pisa, save you all worry,—what might ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... humanity, as bright and as expressive as that which fills the atmosphere of She Stoops to Conquer or A School for Scandal. The characters are neither demons, like Cousin Betty, nor reckless debauchees, like Gertrude in The Stepmother. The whole motif is comic. Moliere himself might have lent a touch of his refined and fragrant wit to the composition; and the situation is one which the author could realize from experience, but had only learned to regard from a humorous standpoint in the ripeness ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden
... airs, as we call them now, which then were the newest of the new—and how to infuse into them his own personality and so to fit them like a glove to his own noels. Thus, his Twelfth noel is set to an air composed by Lulli for the drinking song, "Qu'ils sont doux, bouteille jolie," in Moliere's "Medecin malgre lui"; and those who are familiar with the music of his time will be both scandalized and set a-laughing by finding the uses to which he has put airs which began life in far from seemly company. But his forays were made from choice, ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... French-English kind. The historical and other literature that is thus opened up to you enables you to live in another world, with a point of view impossible to one who reads for pleasure only in his own tongue. To take two instances: Moliere is a complement to Shakespeare, and the man who knows his Moliere as he does his Shakespeare has made a propitious beginning in that study of human character which must be understood if he desires to write a history that shall gain readers. ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... in secret, as Nietzsche was by the idea of eternal recurrence: it forced itself through his guard in "The Mysterious Stranger" and "What is Man?" In Shakespeare, as Shaw has demonstrated, it amounts to a veritable obsession. And what else is there in Balzac, Goethe, Swift, Moliere, Turgenev, Ibsen, Dostoyevsky, Romain Rolland, Anatole France? Or in the Zola of "L'Assomoir," "Germinal," "La Debacle," the whole Rougon-Macquart series? (The Zola of "Les Quatres Evangiles," and particularly of "Fecondite," ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... delightful of his fragments; there is such appreciation of Terence's suavity and tact, of his just and fine judgment, of his discrimination and character. He admits that Terence had no verve; for that he commends the young poet to Moliere or Aristophanes, but as verve was exactly the quality most wanting to Diderot himself, he easily forgave its absence in Terence, and thought it amply replaced by his moderation, his truth, and his fine taste. Colman is praised for translating Terence, for here, says ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... boldness,—or honesty,—to speak of medicines which "are given as much to assist the medical man as his patient." Lectures (London, 1832), p. 14.] Opium is believed in, and quinine, and "rum," using that expressive monosyllable to mean all alcoholic cordials. If Moliere were writing now, instead of saignare, purgare, and the other, he would be more like to say, Stimulare, opium ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... on a study of life as it is, while the figures of the older comedies are frankly conventional. Nowhere in Regnard is there a situation equal in comic power to that in the final act of the Reveillon—a situation Moliere would have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... if it amuses him, and be elected all the same; but if he is not predestined, three hundred volumes and ten masterpieces, recognized as such by the genuflections of an adoring universe, will not aid him to open its doors.' Evidently Balzac was not predestined but then neither was Moliere, and there must have been some consolation for him ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... St. Ansgar and Mitchell, two villages, one four, the other ten miles to the north. Audacious as this may seem, it was deliberately decided upon, and one pleasant day Mitchell and George and I loaded all our scenery into a wagon and drove away across the prairie to our first "stand" very much as Moliere did in his youth, leaving the ladies to follow (in the grandeur of hired ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... necessary for refinement of language and these classicisms were exaggerated by some of the provincial classes who received their expressions from books and the theatre; such authors as Corneille, etc., were studied and their poetic licenses introduced into spoken language. These follies, pictured by Moliere, naturally afforded much amusement in cultured circles where every event of the day was discussed, from the vital affairs of the government to the aesthetic interests ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... has been called the Moliere of Italy, wrote La Bottega di Caffe, (The Coffee House), a naturalistic comedy of bourgeois Venice, satirizing scandal and gambling, in 1750. The scene is a Venetian coffee house (probably Florian's), ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the past, take courage and turn our faces resolutely, hopefully, trustingly to the future. I know of no words more fitting with which to close this humble tribute to the memory of Abraham Lincoln, than those inscribed upon the monument of Moliere: ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... the Commander's Statue. In the familiar story of Don Juan, where the audacious rake accepts the Commander's invitation to supper. For treatments of this theme, see Moliere's play Don Juan, or Mozart's opera Don Giovanni; see also Bernard Shaw's paradoxical play, Man and Superman.... We have something else in hand, thank God, and let him knock. It is possible that Stevenson's words here are an unconscious reminiscence ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... last comedy written by Moliere. He was very ill, nearly dying, at the time he wrote it. It was first acted at the Palais Royal Theatre, on ...
— The Imaginary Invalid - Le Malade Imaginaire • Moliere
... policy to which even his enemies have since done signal justice; alone with us he gave judgment on all things, foreign and domestic, yet we had no legitimate influence; often we were consulted like Laforet by Moliere, and made to feel that the hesitations of long experience were confirmed or removed by the vigorous ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... only had the amateur actors at the chateau played two pieces inoffensive enough in themselves, but a report had been spread that they meant next to perform the famous "Tartuffe" of Moliere, a satire which, while purporting to be levelled against falsehood, lust, greed, and ambition, covered with a mask of religion, was rightly thought by a portion of the clergy to be levelled against themselves. ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... education of a limited number of people has no longer reason for existing unless there is hope of influence on the masses; philosophers have only to keep silent and those great minds on whom the need of your soul leans, Shakespeare, Moliere, Voltaire, etc. have no reason for existing and for ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... connoisseur, but as a person of ordinary sense and feeling. Don't get artist-like qualities for him: but first give him the pleasant sensation of being at the place, then show him how the land lies, how the water runs, how the wind blows, and so on. Always think of the public as Moliere of his old woman; you have done nothing really great or good if you ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... flowing canonicals of the church by law established. Inspiration makes short work with the usage of the best authors and ready-made elegances of diction; but where Wordsworth is not possessed by his demon, as Moliere said of Corneille, he equals Thomson in verbiage, out-Miltons Milton in artifice of style, and Latinizes his diction beyond Dryden. The fact was, that he took up his early opinions on instinct, and insensibly modified ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... Rambouillet saw and enjoyed the first performance of this celebrated play, nor does it appear that she was at all disturbed by the keen satire which was generally supposed to have been directed toward her salon. Moliere himself disclaims all intention of attacking the true precieuse; but the world is not given to fine discrimination, and the true suffers from the blow aimed at the false. This brilliant comedian, whose manners were not of the choicest, was more at home in the lax and epicurean ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... maintain their place beside the middle class, they must renounce all class traditions and begin to adopt the same methods of industrial acquisition to which the middle class owed their wealth and in consequence their de facto power. The comedies of Moliere, who lived at the time of Louis XIV., show us, as an extremely interesting phenomenon, the nobles of the times despising the rich middle class and at the same time playing the parasite at its tables. Louis XIV. himself, this proudest of monarchs, takes off his hat in his palace at ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... with the Prince of Masserano, and with exiled queens and princes of Further India. Gay-Lussac the chemist, Laplace the astronomer, Larrey the surgeon, de Suze the advocate, are here, and with them are Talma, Bellini, Rubini; de Balzac, Beaumarchais, Beranger; Moliere and Lafontaine, and scores of other men whose names and whose worthy labors are as familiar in the remote by-places of civilization as are the historic deeds of the kings and princes that sleep in the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... History since you left me. I am determined to go through with it, if possible, in these days of solitude."[63] And again in a letter written on December 5, 1773, to Mercy Warren, she says: "I send with this the first volume of Moliere and should be glad of your opinion of the plays. I cannot be brought to like them. There seems to me to be a general want of spirit. At the close of every one, I have felt disappointed. There are no characters ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... does not mean that there are no dramatic masterpieces which do not run so fast or that there was not an author of great talent, Moliere, who often brought about his ending by the grace of God. Only, let me add that to secure absolution for the last act of 'Tartuffe' you must ...
— How to Write a Play - Letters from Augier, Banville, Dennery, Dumas, Gondinet, - Labiche, Legouve, Pailleron, Sardou, Zola • Various
... husband was being buried. When, however, the weighted body divided the water with a swingeing sound, her face suddenly suffused, as though shame had touched her or some humiliating idea had come. But she turned to Justine almost immediately, and soon after said calmly: "Bring a play of Moliere, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... indignation in vehement language. Shocked at such barbarity he insisted on all the physicians in the town being called in to see the case; the consequence was that Dr. Neraud, the friend of the Rogrons, was present. The report was unanimously signed. It is useless to give a text of it here. If Moliere's medical terms were barbarous, those of modern science have the advantage of being so clear that the explanation of Pierrette's malady, though natural and unfortunately ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... following note is in the hand-writing of Miss Burney, at a subsequent period. The objection of Mr. Crisp to the MS play of 'The Witlings,' was its resemblance to Moliere's 'Femmes Savantes,' and consequent immense inferiority. It is, however, a curious fact, and to the author a consolatory one, that she had literally never read the 'Femmes Savantes' when ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... be followed by her famous Japanese schottische, and later still by her celebrated Peruvian minuet. Voltaire wrote a lot, but he didn't mention her; Jean Jacques Rousseau scribbled hours, but never so much as referred to her; even Moliere was so reticent on the subject of her undoubted charms that no single word about her can be found ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... rather than the literary turn of dialogue is the thing that counts most in the theatre will be felt emphatically if we compare the mere writing of Moliere with that of his successor and imitator, Regnard. Moliere is certainly a great writer, in the sense that he expresses clearly and precisely the thing he has to say; his verse, as well as his prose, is admirably lucid and eminently speakable. ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... believed to have been first acted at Lyons in 1653, whilst Moliere and his troupe were in the provinces. In the month of November 1658 it was played for the first time in Paris, where it obtained a great and well-deserved success. It is chiefly based on an Italian comedy, written by Nicolo Barbieri, known as Beltrame, and called L'Inavvertito, from ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... sighs. Moliere had not written his scene in "L'Avare" then. Mme. Coquenard was in the dilemma ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... place to Sainte-Beuve's series of essays towards a 'natural history of minds'[4] and Taine's more sweeping attempt to explain literature by environment.[5] Among ourselves, Meredith's Essay on Comedy (1872) brilliantly restated Moliere's dictum that the comic is founded on the real, and not on a fantastic distortion of it, while Matthew Arnold applied alike to literature and to theology a critical insight fertilized by his master Sainte-Beuve's delicate faculty for disengaging the native quality of ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... left hand rather than with the right. Before Ibsen, prose had been but a serving-maid to verse; and no great dramatist had ever put forward the prose conception of the drama. Shakespeare and the Elizabethans had used prose as an escape or a side-issue, for variety, or for the heightening of verse. Moliere had used prose as the best makeshift for verse, because he was not himself a good craftsman in the art. And, along with the verse, and necessarily dependent upon it, there was the poetic, the romantic quality ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... of Moliere's Harpagon, when he requires La Fleche to show him his hands. See L'Avare, act ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... Monsieur Jourdain, in Moliere's comedy, who expressed such surprise at finding that he had been talking prose for forty years without knowing it, was no more amazed than would Mere Mouchard have been had you announced to her that she was ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... and though Gaston Villere, in leaving Harvard College, had shut Horace and Sophocles forever at the earliest instant possible under academic requirements, he knew the Greek and Latin names that he now saw as well as he knew those of Shakespeare, Dante, Moliere, and Cervantes. These were here also; nor could it be precisely said of them, either, that they made a part of the young man's daily reading. As he surveyed the padre's august shelves, it was with a touch of the florid Southern gravity which his Northern education had not wholly ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... dilettante interest in collecting manuscripts, and zeal for style which was genuine in scholars, but was an affectation of the followers. There was also an affectation of pagan philosophy and of alienation from Christianity. The euphuists in England in the sixteenth century, the precieuses of Moliere's time, the illuminati of the eighteenth century, are instances of groups of people who took up a whim and exaggerated conduct of a certain type, practicing an affectation. There are poses which are practiced as a fashion for a time. Fads get currency. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... Fancy; a Comedy, acted at the duke's theatre, and printed in 4to. 1678. The plot of this play, and some of the characters, particularly Sir Patient, is borrowed from Moliere's Malades Imaginaires. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... for myself, as you can pick them up, second-handed or cheap, copies of Otway's Dramatic Works, Ben Jonson's, Dryden's, Congreve's, Wycherley's, Vanbrugh's, Gibber's, or any Dramatic Works of the more modern Macklin, Garrick, Foote, Colman, or Sheridan. A good copy too of Moliere, in French, I much want. Any other good dramatic authors in that language I want also; but comic authors chiefly, though I should wish to have Racine, Corneille, and Voltaire too. I am in no hurry for all, or any of these, but if you ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... Moliere's farce, when the true nobleman broke in on their high life below stairs, we were destined to be confronted with a real pedlar. To make the lesson still more poignant for fallen gentlemen like us, he was a pedlar of infinitely more consideration than the sort ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... having seen revolutions face to face, can see more clearly the destiny of humanity and comprehend Providence better,—Balzac redeemed himself smiling and severe from those formidable studies which produced melancholy in Moliere and ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... 'Festin de pierre': Moliere's play, in which the hero, Don Juan, rashly invites the statue of a man he has murdered to dine with him. The ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock |
