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Papillon

Henri Charrière

Top 10 Best Quotes

“We have too much technological progress, life is too hectic, and our society has only one goal: to invent still more technological marvels to make life even easier and better. The craving for every new scientific discovery breeds a hunger for greater comfort and the constant struggle to achieve it. All that kills the soul, kills compassion, understanding, nobility. It leaves no time for caring what happens to other people, least of all criminals. Even the officials in Venezuela's remote areas are better for they're also concerned with public peace. It gives them many headaches, but they seem to believe that bringing about a man's salvation is worth the effort. I find that magnificent.”

“I’ve known this a long time, because when Napoleon III created the bagnes and was asked: “But who will guard these bandits?” he answered: “Worse bandits.”

“I must prove that I can be, that I am and will be, a normal person. Perhaps no better, but certainly no worse than the rest.”

“We have too much technological progress, life is too hectic, and our society has only one goal: to invent still more technological marvels to make life even easier and better. The craving for every new scientific discovery breeds a hunger for greater comfort and the constant struggle to achieve it. All that kills the soul, kills compassion, understanding, nobility. It leaves no time for caring what happens to other people, least of all criminals.”

“It was worth having made this break for the people, the human beings it had brought me into contact with. Although it had failed, my escape had been a victory, merely by having enriched my heart with the friendship of these wonderful people. No, I was not sorry. I had done it.”

“Those who haven't been exposed to the hypocrisies of a civilized education react to things 'naturally', as they happen. It is in the here and now that they are either happy or unhappy, joyful or sad, interested or indifferent.”

“This was 1941 and I'd been in prison eleven years. I was thirty-five. I'd spent the best years of my life either in a cell or in a black-hole. I'd only had seven months of total freedom with my Indian tribe. The children my Indian wives must have had by me would be eight years old now. How terrible! How quickly the time had flashed by! But a backward glance showed all these hours and minutes studding my calvary as terribly long, and each one of them hard to bear.”

“The important thing was that we were alive...”

“Sleep in peace, you members of the jury who condemned me to this place; sleep in peace,”

“What should we do? I was beginning to understand a few words of Spanish: to escape, fugar; prisoner, preso; to kill, matar; chain, cadena; handcuffs, esposas; man, hombre; woman, mujer.”

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Book Keywords:

civilization, society, technology, salvation, prison-break-escape-freedom, life-and-living

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