Another masterpiece from Honore de Balzac, regarding the ruthless society and its victims who dazzle to taste a glimpse of the fake luxury and happiness!!"your Paris is nothing but a slough..
and a very queer slough too, replied Vautrin. If you get splashed with its mud riding in a carriage you're an honest fellow, while you're a rogue if you get dirty on foot. If you have the bad luck to nab something from someone you become a peep-show for the crowd at the Place du Palais de Justice, but you are pointed out in the salons as virtue itself if you steal a million: and what's more you pay thirty millions to the police force and the law- courts to maintain this system of morality.
It's a pretty state of affairs"
"If i have one more piece of advice to give you, my sweet lad, it is this- don't stick any more firmly to your opinions than to your work. When you are asked for them, sell them. A man who boasts of never changing his opinions is a man who forces himself to move always in a straight line, a simpleton who believes he is infallible. There are no such things as principles, there are only events; there are no laws, there are only circumstances: the man is wiser than his fellows accepts events and circumstances in order to turn them to his own ends"
"Believe whatever evil you may hear about the world, it's all true"
"Youth, moreover, when it turns to wrong-doing dares not look at itself in the mirror of conscience, while maturity has itself been there: the whole difference between these two phases of life lies in that"
Enjoy the rest of the book :)
