"Tartufe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to this principle. A great effect is sometimes attained by retarding the entrance of a single leading figure for a whole act, or even two, while he is so constantly talked about as to beget in the audience a vivid desire to make his personal acquaintance. Thus Moliere's Tartufe does not come on the stage until the third act of the comedy which bears his name. Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman is unseen until the second act, though (through his wife's ears) we have already heard him ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... this is unfailing, inimitable, never to be forgotten. Some good people cry out that she is so wicked. Of course she is wicked: so were Iago and Blifil. The only question is, if she be real? Most certainly she is, as real as anything in the whole range of fiction, as real as Tartuffe, or Gil Blas, Wilhelm Meister, or Rob Roy. No one doubts that Becky Sharps exist: unhappily they are not even very uncommon. And Thackeray has drawn one typical example of such bad women with an anatomical precision that ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... ugliness cheers it, deformity provokes it to laughter, vice diverts it; be eccentric and you may be an eccentric; even hypocrisy, that supreme cynicism, does not disgust it; it is so literary that it does not hold its nose before Basile, and is no more scandalized by the prayer of Tartuffe than Horace was repelled by the "hiccup" of Priapus. No trait of the universal face is lacking in the profile of Paris. The bal Mabile is not the polymnia dance of the Janiculum, but the dealer in ladies' ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the same day which saw his next comedy, "Le Mariage Force," there came out as a part of the royal fete, the three first acts, or rough sketch, of the celebrated satire, entitled "Tartuffe," one of the most powerful of Moliere's compositions. It was applauded, but from the clamor excited against the poet and the performance, as an attack on religion, instead of its impious and insidious adversary, hypocrisy, the representation was for ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... lines, more valuable than many volumes, J.B. Say has already remarked that there are two ways of removing the disorder introduced by hypocrisy into an honorable family; to reform Tartuffe, or sharpen the wits of Orgon. Moliere, that great painter of human life, seems constantly to have had in view the second process ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... had Angouleme at his fingers' ends; he saw all the difficulties at a glance, and resolved to sweep them out of the way by a bold stroke that only a Tartuffe's brain could invent. The puny lawyer was not a little amused to find his fellow-conspirator keeping his word with him; not a word did Petit-Claud utter; he respected the musings of his companion, and they walked the whole way ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac |
