#cquotes

[aedislumen]

"My relatives, friends, and all men of liberal and moderate ideas share in my misfortunes: they believe me to be in anguish. Let them rest assured; I can confirm to them that great truth of universal morality, that with a pure heart one is never miserable."

French original:

"Des parens, des amis, tous les hommes à idées liberales et modérées prennent part à mes infortunes : ils me croyent dans l'affliction. Q'ils se rassurent ; je puis confirmer à leurs yeux cette grande vérité de morale universelle, qu'avec un coeur pur on n'est jamais malheureux."

— Lazare Carnot, Exposé de la conduite politique de M. le lieutenant-général Carnot depuis le 1er juillet 1814, deuxième ed., Paris, Impr.-Lib. Courcier, 1815.

[aedislumen]

On Sunday, 15 May 1753, after vespers, at four o'clock, my wife gave birth to a son who was baptised the same day by M. Boussey, vicar priest, in Nolay; his godfather was M. Nicolas Clément, son of Marie Carnot, my sister, and his godmother was demoiselle Marguerite Pothier, daughter of M. Pothier, living in Nolay, my wife's uncle. He is called Lazare-Nicolas-Marguerite. This child was born in a time of calamity because of the rapid and frequent deaths which afflict this country, as well as all those of the province. May God show him his wrath throughout his life, so that he may behave with awe and deserve his mercy!

— A note that Claude Carnot wrote in his family record book on the occasion of the birth of his son Lazare. This excerpt is reported in the first volume of Mémoires sur Carnot par son fils (1861) by Hippolyte Carnot, p. 71.

[namelessmons]

We see this toward the end of many people’s lives, when everything in their wasted bodies fights to stay alive, for a few more kisses or bites of ice cream, one more hour with you. Life is still flowing through them: life is them. […] That’s magic, or the human spirit, or hope — whatever you want to call it — to captivate, to share contented time.

Anne Lamott, from Almost Everything: Notes on Hope

[namelessmons]

In a word, there are many thorns, but the roses are there too.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, from The Life and Letters of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

[namelessmons]

I don't ask you to love me always like this but I ask you to remember. Somewhere inside of me there will always be the person I am tonight.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, from Tender Is the Night

[namelessmons]

After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on — have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear — what remains? Nature remains; to bring out from their torpid recesses, the affinities of a man or woman with the open air, the trees, fields, the changes of seasons — the sun by day and the stars of heaven by night.

Walt Whitman, from Specimen Days