Compelling passages, notable quotables, bon mots, disjecta, ephemera, and miscellany.

“The sentiment which man finds most unbearable is pity, particularly when he deserves it. Hatred is the tonic which brings one to life and inspires vengeance; but pity kills, robbing the weak of what little strength they have left. Pity is malice turned soft-tongued, contempt wrapped in tenderness, or tenderness covering up insult. In all these people Raphael found pity: gloating in the contrarian, inquisitive in the child, meddlesome in the woman, avaricious in the husband; but whatever form this pity took, it was always big with the threat of death. A poet will make a poem of anything, a dirge or lyric according to the images that impress him; his exalted soul disdains soft, pastel tints and always opts for clear and vivid colours. The poem dictated to Raphael by this universal pity was one of doleful mourning.”

— from The Wild Ass’s Skin (La Peau de Chagrin, 1835), by Honoré de Balzac

Translated by Herbert J. Hunt (Penguin Classics, 1977)