Our happiness, dear friend, will always fit between the soles of our feet and the crown of our head; and whether it costs us a million a year or a hundred louis, we all, inside, have the same intrinsic perception of it.
Notre bonheur, mon cher, tiendra toujours entre la plante de nos pieds et notre occiput; et qu'il coûte un million par an ou cent louis, la perception intrinsèque en est la même au dedans de nous.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Monday, April 28, 2025
Happiness
Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850), Père Goriot (Bianchon to Rastignac; tr. Olivia McCannon):