When a peasant begins to feel the need for instruction, he usually becomes fiercely calculating.

It was in that uncertain state of mind that he began to sketch her face.

This sounded the death knell of small family businesses, soon to be followed by the disappearance of the individual entrepreneur, gobbled up one by one by the increasingly hungry ogre of capitalism, and drowned by the rising tide of large companies.

I defy you to find any real will, any reasoning force, outside of life. And everything is there; there is, in the world, no other will than this force which impels everything to life, a life even broader and higher.

All his [Laurent's] great powerful body wanted was to do nothing, to wallow in never-ending idleness and self-indulgence. He would have liked to eat well, sleep well, satisfy his passions liberally, without stirring from one spot or risking the misfortune of a bit of fatigue.

Words failed him again; he began to stammer in his unsuccessful attempt to express the first vague stirrings of the future he could feel within himself. While he finished feverishly brushing in the black velvet jacket, there was a long silence.