Life
His mother, a Spanish lady named Gilette de Salgues, died when he was a child. He was brought up by his grandfather and studied at St. Hippolyte. His uncle and guardian, the Marquis of Florian, who had married a niece of Voltaire, introduced him at the château de Ferney and in 1768 he became page at Anet in the household of the Duc de Penthièvre, who remained his friend throughout his life. Having studied for some time at the artillery school at Bapaume he obtained from his patron a captain's commission in the dragoon regiment of Penthièvre.
He left the army soon after and began to write comedies, and was elected to the Académie Française in 1788. On the outbreak of the French Revolution he retired to Sceaux, but he was soon discovered and imprisoned; and though Robespierre's death spared him, he died a few months later still in prison.
Read more about this topic: Jean-Pierre Claris De Florian
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Why not make an end of it all?... My life is a succession of griefs and bitter feelings.... What is death?... A very small matter, when all is said; only a fool would be concerned about it.”
—Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842)
“And we can get back to that raw state
Of feeling, so long deemed
Inconsequential and therefore appropriate to our later musings
About religion, about migrations. What is restored
Becomes stronger than the loss as it is remembered;
Is a new, separate life of its own.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Truth is the kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live. The value for life is ultimately decisive.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)