Book Description

Excerpt from Madame Roland: A Study in Revolution Sometimes there seems to be nothing in life at all save the putting out of effort in some way or other, and we have to hold firmly to the belief that to act with enthusiasm and faith is the one condition Of acting greatly. Life, as far as we know it, is action, is passion, and if a man does not share in the action or the passion of his time, he runs the peril of being judged not to have lived at all. The woman about whom this book has been written is distinguished by a determination to share in the passion of her day. She believed in the unexplainable worth and sure issue of effort, and she stood steadily on her course of unfaltering preparation for that public and political life to which she believed against all evidence that she might one day be called. For this people have called Madame Roland a prig, as if by slinging an idle epithet all interest in her could be for ever stilled. It does not matter what they call her, the fact remains that her life, priggish or no, unsympathetic or no, was a life of purpose and direction She was not particularly Witty or humorous, -people of purpose seldom are, - but she had a fund of gaiety and good temper which endeared her to a great many of her contempo raries. There was no insipidity about her, she led her own life absolutely, Wherever she was stationed. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.