Book//mark – Fortunata and Jacinta | Benito Pérez Galdós, 1887

“Ah finery! Who cannot perceive here one of the main sources of energy in the present age,
a generic source of activity and life? Think for a moment what it represents, what it is worth;
think of the wealth and ability devoted to producing it by the most industrious city in the world.
Without you liking the idea, from among the folds of fashionable materials will appear our
entire middle-class structure, an enormous pyramid with a topic hat at its apex, the whole
political and administrative machine, the public debt, the railways, the national budget and
income, the judiciary and socialist parliamentary activity.”

“He was an author of bad novels, and not being able to write them for the public
anymore he tried to fill real life with the products of his tubercular imagination.”

“There is no human being, no matter how despicable he may seem,
who cannot stand out in something.”

“Everything in this world depends on form, on style. Nothing is good or bad in itself.”

“If I had to choose between a society without principles and a society
without appearances, I don’t know which I’d take.”

“Moreno, in his mildly troubled state, had begun to confuse
immediate impressions with memories.”

“Life ceased in him as a consequence of a ruptured heart, which produced an instantaneous
commotion that vanished as quickly as it had come. He was torn away from the great tree of
humanity, a completely dry leaf whose imperceptible fibers had held him there. The tree felt
nothing in its myriad branches. Here and there, at the same moment, leaves and more useless
leaves were falling; but the next morning would reveal countless fresh new buds.”

“Evil breeds, and the good are annihilated in sterility.”

“But they won’t be able to confine my thoughts
within these walls. I live among the stars.”

Benito Perez Galdos. Fortunata and Jacinta: Two Stories of Married Women, 1887