Machado de Assis

“Cotrim, who was present, said: “Those came who had a genuine interest in you and in us. The eighty would have come only as a formality, would have talked about the inertia of the government, about patent medicines, about the price of real estate, or about each other…” Damasceno listened in silence, shook his head again, and sighed: “But they should have at least come.”

“As it is my practice here to conceal nothing, I shall relate on this page the episode of the wall. Virigilia and Lobo Neves were soon to sail. Entering Dona Placida’s house, I saw on the table a folded piece of paper. It was a note from Virgilia. It said that she would be waiting for me in the garden at sundown, without fail. It concluded, “The wall is low on the side toward the little path.” I made a gesture of displeasure. The letter seemed to me extraordinary audacious, ill-considered, and even ridiculous. It not only invited scandal, it invited it together with laughter and sneers. I pictured myself leaping over the wall and caught in the act by an officer of the law, who led me off to jail. “The wall is low…” And what if it was low? Obviously Virgilia did not know what she was doing; perhaps by now she wished she had not sent the note. I looked at it, a small piece of paper, wrinkled by inflexible. I felt an urge to tear it in thirty thousand pieces and to throw it to the wind as the last vestige of my adventure; but I did not do so. Self-love, shame at the thought of fleeing from danger…There was no way out; I would have to go. “Tell her I’ll go.” “Where?” asked Dona Placida. “Where she said she would wait for me.” “She said nothing to me.” “In this note.” Dona Placida stared. “But this paper, I found it this morning in your drawer, and I thought that…” I felt a queer sensation. I reread the paper and looked at it a long time; it was, indeed an old note that Virgilia had sent me in the early days of our love, and I had leaped the cooperatively low wall and had met her in the garden. I had put the note away and…I felt a queer sensation.”

“There he is, bent over the page, with a monocle in his right eye, wholly devoted to the noble but rugged task of ferreting out the error. He has already promised himself to write a little monograph in which he will relate the finding of the book and the discovery of the error, if there really is one hidden there. In the end, he discovers nothing and contents himself with possession of the book. He closes it, gazes at it, gazes at it again, goes to the window and holds it in the sun. The only copy! At this moment a Caesar or a Cromwell passes beneath his window, on the road to power and glory. He turns his back, closes the window, stretches in his hammock, and fingers the leaves of the book slowly, lovingly, tasting it sip by sip...An only copy!”

“Why the devil couldn’t it have been blue?” I said to myself. And this thought—one of the most profound ever made since the discovery of butterflies—consoled me for my misdeed and reconciled me with myself. I stood there, looking at the corpse with, I confess, a certain sympathy. The butterfly had probably come out of the woods, well-fed and happy, into the sunlight of a beautiful morning. Modest in its demands on life, it had been content to fly about and exhibit its special beauty under the vast cupola of a blue sky, al sky that is always blue for those that have wings. It flew through my open window, entered by room, and found me there. I suppose it had never seen a man; therefore it did not know what a man was. It described an infinite number of circles about my body and saw that I moved, that I had eyes, arms, legs, a divine aspect, and colossal stature. Then it said to itself, “This is probably the maker of butterflies.” The idea overwhelmed it, terrified it; but fear, which is sometimes stimulating, suggested the best way for it to please its creator was to kiss him on the forehead, and so it kissed me on the forehead. When I brushed it away, it rested on the windowpane, saw from there the portrait of my father, and quite possibly perceived a half-truth, i.e., that the man in the picture was the father of the creator of butterflies, and it flew to beg his mercy. Then a blow from a towel ended the adventure. Neither the blue sky’s immensity, nor the flowers’ joy, nor the green leaves’ splendor could protect the creature against a face towel, a few square inches fo cheap linin. Note how excellent it is to be superior to butterflies! For, even if it had been blue, its life would not have been safe; I might have pierced it with a pin and kept it to delight my eyes. It was not blue. This last thought consoled me again. I placed the nail of my middle finger against my thumb, gave the cadaver a flip, and it fell into the garden. It was high time; the provident ants were already gathering around…Yes, I stand by my first idea: I think that it would have been better for the butterfly if it had been born blue.”

“The next day, he read to me a freshly composed dirge in which the circumstances of his wife’s death and burial were commemorated. He read it in a voice quavering with emotion, and the hand that held the paper was trembling. When he had finished, he asked me whether the verses were worthy of the treasure that he had lost. “They are,” I said. “They may lack poetic inspiration,” he remarked, after a moment’s hesitation, “but no one can deny them sentiment—although possibly the sentiment itself prejudices the merits…” “Not in my opinion. I find the poem perfect.” “Yes, I suppose, when you consider…Well, after all, it’s just a few lines written by a sailor.” “By a sailor who happens to be also a poet.” He shrugged his shoulders, looked at the paper, and recited his composition again, but this time without quavering or trembling, emphasizing the literary qualities and bringing out the imagery and music in the verses. When he had finished, he expressed the opinion that it was the most finished of his works, and I agreed. He shook my hand and predicted a great future for me.”

“…like the horse in the old ballads, which Romanticism found in the medieval castle and left in the streets of our own century. The Romanticists rode the poor best until he was so nearly dead that he finally lay down in the gutter, where the realists found him, his flesh eaten away by sores and worms, and, out of pity, carried him away to their books.”

“Observe now with what skill, with what art, I make the biggest transition in this book. Observe: my delirium began in the presence of Virgilia; Virigilia was the great sin of my youth; there is no youth without childhood; childhood presupposes birth; and so we arrive, effortlessly, at October 20, 1805, the date of my birth.”

“The reader, like his fellows, doubtless prefers action to reflection, and doubtless he is wholly in the right. So we shall get to it. However, I must advise that this book is written leisurely, with the leisureliness of a man no longer troubled by the flight of time; that is a work supinely philosophical, but of a philosophy wanting in uniformity, now austere, now playful, a thing that neither edifies nor destroys, neither inflames nor chills, and that is at once more of a pastime and less than a preachment.”

“Mas deveras estariam eles doido, e foram curados por mim, ou o que pareceu cura não foi mais do que a descoberta do perfeito desequilíbrio do cérebro?”

“O desfecho deste episódio da crônica itaguaiense é de tal ordem, e tão inesperado, que merecia nada menos de dez capítulo de exposição; mas contento-me com um que será o remate da narrativa, e um dos mais belos exemplos de convicção científica e abnegação humana.”

“[...] daí a alegação de que não havia regra para a completa sanidade mental.”

“[...] mas pode entrar no ânimo do governo eliminar a loucura? Não. E se o governo não a pode eliminar, está ao menos apto para discriminá-la, reconhecê-la? Também não; é matéria de Ciência.”

“Demais, a Casa Verde é uma instituição pública; tal a aceitamos das mãos da câmara dissolvida. Há entretanto – por força que há de haver – um alvitre intermédio que restituiu o sossego ao espírito público”

“Destruamos o cárcere de vossos filhos e pais, de vossas mães e irmãos, de vossos parentes e amigos e de vós mesmos. Ou morrereis a pão e água, talvez a chicote, na masmorra daquele indigno.”

“- A Casa Verde é um cárcere privado – disse um médico sem clínica.”

“A loucura, objeto dos meus estudos, era até agora uma ilha perdida no oceano da razão; começo a suspeitar que é um continente.”

“Simão Bacamarte entendeu desde logo reformar tão ruim costume; pediu licença à câmara para agasalhar e tratar no edifício que ia construir todos os loucos de Itaguaí e das demais vilas e cidades, mediante um estipêndio, que a câmara lhe daria quando a família do enfermo o não pudesse fazer.”

“Assim é que cada louco furioso era trancado em uma alcova na própria casa, e não curado, mas descurado até que a morte o vinha desfraldar do benefício da vida.”

“Lovers' language, give me an exact and poetic comparison to say what those eyes of Capitu were like. No image comes to mind that doesn't offend against the rules of good style, to say what they were and what they did to me. Undertow eyes? Why not? Undertow. That's the notion that the new expression put in my head. They held some kind of mysterious, active fluid, a force that dragged one in, like the undertow of a wave retreating from the shore on stormy days. So as not to be dragged in, I held onto anything around them, her ears, her arms, her hair spread about her shoulders; but as soon as I returned to the pupils of her eyes again, the wave emerging from them grew towards me, deep and dark, threatening to envelop me, draw me in and swallow me up.”

“O mais feroz dos animais domésticos é o relógio de parede. Conheço um que já devorou três gerações da minha família.”

“Matamos o tempo, o tempo nos enterra.”

“Ai dor! Era-me preciso enterrar magnificamente os meus amores. Eles lá iam, mar em fora, no espaço e no tempo, e eu ficava-me ali numa ponta de mesa, com os meus quarenta anos, tão vadios e tão vazios; ficava-me para os não ver nunca mais, porque ela poderia tornar e tornou, mas o eflúvio da manhã quem é que o pediu ao crepúsculo da tarde?”

“Invenções há, que se transformam ou acabam; as mesmas instituições morrem; o relógio é definitivo e perpétuo. O derradeiro homem, ao despedir-se do sol frio e gasto, há de ter um relógio na algibeira, para saber a hora exata em que morre.”

“Eu sei que vossa excelência preferia uma delicada mentira; mas eu não conheço nada mais delicado que a verdade.”

“Não confunda o romance com a vida, ou viverá desgraçada.”

“Ouça-me este conselho: em política, não se perdoa nem se esquece nada.”

“Quem escapa do perigo vive a vida com outra intensidade.”

“Quando estimo alguém, perdôo; quando não estimo, esqueço. Perdoar e esquecer é raro, mas não é possível; está nas tuas mãos”

“O maior pecado, depois do pecado, é a publicação do pecado.”

“O casamento é a pior ou a melhor coisa do mundo; pura questão de temperamento.”

“Não se deliberam sentimentos; ama-se ou aborrece-se, conforme o coração quer.”

“Mas a saudade é isto mesmo; é o passar e repassar das memórias antigas”

“Esquecer é uma necessidade. A vida é uma lousa, em que o destino, para escrever um novo caso, precisa de apagar o caso escrito.”

“O que a tornava superior e lhe dava probabilidade de triunfo, era a arte de acomodar-se às circunstâncias do momento e a toda a casta de espíritos, artepreciosa, que faz hábeis os homens e estimáveis as mulheres.”

“Mas a tristeza é necessária à vida, acudiu D. Tomásia, que abrira osolhos logo à entrada do marido. As dores alheias fazem lembrar aspróprias, e são um corretivo da alegria, cujo excesso pode engendrar oorgulho.”

“(...) preferi dormir, que é um modo interino de morrer.”

“He felt that there is a loose balance of good and evil, and that the art of living consists in getting the greatest good out of the greatest evil.”

“In ordinary life, the action of a third party does not free the contractor from an obligation; but the advantage of making a contract with heaven is that intentions are valid currency.”

“Prometheus. The truth unknown to man is the madness of him who proclaims it. Proceed, and have done.”

“Deus, para a felicidade do homem, inventou a fé e o amor. O Diabo, invejoso, fez o homem confundir fé com religião e amor com casamento.”

“Purifica o teu coração antes de permitires que o amor entre nele, pois até o mel mais doce azeda num recipiente sujo.”

“Each person is worth the value put on them by the affection of others, and that is where popular wisdom has found that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

“,,,we forget our good actions only slowly, and in fact never truly forget them.”

“...Love, my lads! And above all, love pretty, charming girls; they are the remedy for evil, they give a sweet smell to rottenness, they exchange life for death...Love, my lads!”

“...one of the roles of man is to shut his eyes and keep them shut to see if he can continue into the night of his old age the dream curtailed in the night of his youth.”

“Let Pascal say that man is a thinking reed. He is wrong; man is a thinking erratum. Each period in life is a new edition that corrects the preceding one and that in turn will be corrected by the next, until publication of the definitive edition, which the publisher donates to the worms.”

“Imagine a man between thirty-eight and forty, tall, slim, and pale. His clothes, except for their style, looked as if they'd escaped from the Babylonian captivity. The hat was a contemporary of one of Gessler's. Imagine now a frock coat broader than the needs of his frame--or, literally, that person's bones. The fringe had disappeared some time ago, of the eight original buttons, three were left. The brown drill trousers had two strong knee patches, while the cuffs had been chewed by the heels of boots that bore no pity or polish. About his neck the ends of a tie of two faded colors floated, gripping a week-old collar. I think he was also wearing a dark silk vest, torn in places and unbuttoned. "I'll bet you don't know me, my good Dr. Cubas," he said. "I can't recall...""I'm Borba, Quincas Borba.”

“O Diabo, invejoso, fez o homem confundir fé com religião e amor com casamento.”

“Não te irrites se te pagarem mal um benefício: antes cair das nuvens, que de um terceiro andar.”

“Ao verme que primeiro roeu as frias carnes do meu cadáver dedico como saudosa lembrança estas memórias póstumas”