Poets from France

"Je m'en vais chercher un grand peut-être; tirez le rideau, la farce est jouée."

"Je n'ai rien vaillant; je dois beaucoup; je donne le reste aux pauvres."

"Readers, friends, if you turn these pages Put your prejudice aside, For, really, there's nothing here that's outrageous, Nothing sick, or bad — or contagious. Not that I sit here glowing with pride For my book: all you'll find is laughter: That's all the glory my heart is after, Seeing how sorrow eats you, defeats you. I'd rather write about laughing than crying, For laughter makes men human, and courageous."

"Pour ce que rire est le propre de l'homme."

"It becomes you to be wise to smell, feel, and have in estimation these fair books, de haulte gresse, light in the pursuit, and bold at the encounter. Then you must, by a curious reading and frequent meditation, break the bone and suck out the substantific marrow, — that is what I mean by these Pythagorean symbols, — with assured hope of becoming well-advised and valiant by the said reading; for in it you shall find another kind of taste, and a doctrine more profound, which will disclose unto you deep doctrines and dreadful mysteries, as well in what concerneth our religion as matters of the public state and life economical."

"Revenons à nos moutons"

"I drink no more than a sponge."

"Appetite comes with eating, says Angeston. But the thirst goes away with drinking."

"Natura abhorret vacuum."

"As soon as he was born, he cried not as other babes use to do, Miez, miez, miez, miez, but with a high, sturdy, and big voice shouted about, Some drink, some drink, some drink, as inviting all the world to drink with him. The noise hereof was so extremely great, that it was heard in both the countries at once of Beauce and Bibarois. I doubt me, that you do not thoroughly believe the truth of this strange nativity. Though you believe it not, I care not much: but an honest man, and of good judgment, believeth still what is told him, and that which he finds written."

"Thought the moon was made of green cheese."

"He always looked a given horse in the mouth."

"By robbing Peter he paid Paul, … and hoped to catch larks if ever the heavens should fall."

"He did not care a button for it."

"How well I feathered my nest."

"He laid him squat as a flounder."

"So much is a man worth as he esteems himself."

"Send them home as merry as crickets."

"A good crier of green sauce."

"Then I began to think that it is very true which is commonly said, that the one half of the world knoweth not how the other half liveth."

"Les heures sont faictez pour l'homme, et non l'homme pour les heures."

"Being come down from thence towards Seville, they were heard by Gargantua, who said then unto those that were with him, Comrades and fellow-soldiers, we have here met with an encounter, and they are ten times in number more than we. Shall we charge them or no? What a devil, said the monk, shall we do else? Do you esteem men by their number rather than by their valour and prowess? With this he cried out, Charge, devils, charge! Which when the enemies heard, they thought certainly that they had been very devils, and therefore even then began all of them to run away as hard as they could drive, Drawforth only excepted, who immediately settled his lance on its rest, and therewith hit the monk with all his force on the very middle of his breast, but, coming against his horrific frock, the point of the iron being with the blow either broke off or blunted, it was in matter of execution as if you had struck against an anvil with a little wax-candle."

"Comrades, I hear the track and beating of the enemy's horse-feet, and withal perceive that some of them come in a troop and full body against us. Let us rally and close here, then set forward in order, and by this means we shall be able to receive their charge to their loss and our honour."

"Et guerre faicte sans bonne provision d'argent, n'a qu'un souspirail de vigueur. Les nerfz des batailles sont les pecunes."

"Corn is the sinews of war."

"Our forefathers and ancestors of all times have been of this nature and disposition, that, upon the winning of a battle, they have chosen rather, for a sign and memorial of their triumphs and victories, to erect trophies and monuments in the hearts of the vanquished by clemency than by architecture in the lands which they had conquered. For they did hold in greater estimation the lively remembrance of men purchased by liberality than the dumb inscription of arches, pillars, and pyramids, subject to the injury of storms and tempests, and to the envy of everyone."

"In end, this free goodwill and simple meaning of the Canarians wrought such tenderness in my father's heart that he could not abstain from shedding tears, and wept most profusely; then, by choice words very congruously adapted, strove in what he could to diminish the estimation of the good offices which he had done them, saying, that any courtesy he had conferred upon them was not worth a rush, and what favour soever he had showed them he was bound to do it."

"Time, which gnaws and diminisheth all things else, augments and increaseth benefits; because a noble action of liberality, done to a man of reason, doth grow continually by his generous thinking of it and remembering it. Being unwilling therefore any way to degenerate from the hereditary mildness and clemency of my parents, I do now forgive you, deliver you from all fines and imprisonments, fully release you, set you at liberty, and every way make you as frank and free as ever you were before."

"There was left only the monk to provide for, whom Gargantua would have made Abbot of Seville, but he refused it. He would have given him the Abbey of Bourgueil, or of Sanct Florent, which was better, or both, if it pleased him ; but the monk gave him a very peremptory answer, that he would never take upon him the charge nor government of monks. For how shall I be able, said he, to rule over others, that have not full power and command of myself: If you think I have done you, or may hereafter do you any acceptable service, give me leave to found an abbey after my own mind and fancy."

"Here enter not vile bigots, hypocrites, Externally devoted apes, base snites, Puffed-up, wry-necked beasts, worse than the Huns, Or Ostrogoths, forerunners of baboons: Cursed snakes, dissembled varlets, seeming sancts, Slipshod caffards, beggars pretending wants, Fat chuffcats, smell-feast knockers, doltish gulls, Out-strouting cluster-fists, contentious bulls, Fomenters of divisions and debates, Elsewhere, not here, make sale of your deceits."

"Here enter not attorneys, barristers, Nor bridle-champing law-practitioners: Clerks, commissaries, scribes, nor pharisees, Wilful disturbers of the people's ease: Judges, destroyers, with an unjust breath, Of honest men, like dogs, even unto death. Your salary is at the gibbet-foot: Go drink there! for we do not here fly out On those excessive courses, which may draw A waiting on your courts by suits in law."

"Grace, honour, praise, delight, Here sojourn day and night. Sound bodies lined With a good mind, Do here pursue with might Grace, honour, praise, delight.Here enter you, and welcome from our hearts, All noble sparks, endowed with gallant parts. This is the glorious place, which bravely shall Afford wherewith to entertain you all. Were you a thousand, here you shall not want For anything; for what you'll ask we'll grant. Stay here, you lively, jovial, handsome, brisk, Gay, witty, frolic, cheerful, merry, frisk, Spruce, jocund, courteous, furtherers of trades, And, in a word, all worthy gentle blades."

"Here enter you, pure, honest, faithful, true Expounders of the Scriptures old and new. Whose glosses do not blind our reason, but Make it to see the clearer, and who shut Its passages from hatred, avarice, Pride, factions, covenants, and all sort of vice. Come, settle here a charitable faith, Which neighbourly affection nourisheth. And whose light chaseth all corrupters hence, Of the blest word, from the aforesaid sense.The holy sacred Word, May it always afford T' us all in common, Both man and woman, A spiritual shield and sword, The holy sacred Word."

"Alluring, courtly, comely, fine, complete, Wise, personable, ravishing, and sweet, Come joys enjoy. The Lord celestial Hath given enough wherewith to please us all."

"All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of their beds when they thought good : they did eat, drink, labour, sleep, when they had a mind to it, and were disposed for it. None did awake them, none did offer to constrain them to eat, drink, nor to do any other thing ; for so had Gargantua established it. In all their rule, and strictest tie of their order, there was but this one clause to be observed,"

"Then shall you many gallant men see by Valour stirr'd up, and youthful fervency, Who, trusting too much in their hopeful time, Live but a while, and perish in their prime. Neither shall any, who this course shall run, Leave off the race which he hath once begun, Till they the heavens with noise by their contention Have fill'd, and with their steps the earth's dimension. Then those shall have no less authority, That have no faith, than those that will not lie; For all shall be governed by a rude, Base, ignorant, and foolish multitude; The veriest lout of all shall be their judge, O horrible and dangerous deluge!"

"Then fail not most carefully to peruse the books of the Greek, Arabian, and Latin physicians, not despising the Talmudists and Cabalists; and by frequent anatomies get thee the perfect knowledge of that other world, called the microcosm, which is man. And at some of the hours of the day apply thy mind to the study of the Holy Scriptures; first, in Greek, the New Testament, with the Epistles of the Apostles;: and then the Old Testament in Hebrew. In brief, let me see thee an abyss and bottomless pit of knowledge; for from henceforward, as thou growest great and becomest a man, thou must part from this tranquillity and rest of study, thou must learn chivalry, warfare, and the exercises of the field, the better thereby to defend my house and our friends, and to succour and protect them at all their needs against the invasion and assaults of evildoers."

"But because, as the wise man Solomon saith, Wisdom entereth not into a malicious mind, and that knowledge without conscience is but the ruin of the soul, it behoveth thee to serve, to love, to fear God, and on him to cast all thy thoughts and all thy hope, and by faith formed in charity to cleave unto him, so that thou mayst never be separated from him by thy sins. Suspect the abuses of the world. Set not thy heart upon vanity, for this life is transitory, but the Word of the Lord endureth for ever. Be serviceable to all thy neighbours, and love them as thyself. Reverence thy preceptors: shun the conversation of those whom thou desirest not to resemble, and receive not in vain the graces which God hath bestowed upon thee."

"En toutes compagnies il y a plus de folz que de sages, et la plus grande partie surmonte tousjours la meilleure."

"Subject to a kind of disease, which at that time they called lack of money."

"Loupgarou was come with all his giants, who, seeing Pantagruel in a manner alone, was carried away with temerity and presumption, for hopes that he had to kill the good man. Whereupon he said to his companions the giants, You wenchers of the low country, by Mahoom, if any of you undertake to fight against these men here, I will put you cruelly to death. It is my will, that you let me fight single. In the meantime you shall have good sport to look upon us."

"This flea which I have in mine ear."

"You have there hit the nail on the head."

"I have already related to you great and admirable things; but, if you might be induced to adventure upon the hazard of believing some other divinity of this sacred Pantagruelion, I very willingly would tell it you. Believe it, if you will, or otherwise, believe it not, I care not which of them you do, they are both alike to me. It shall be sufficient for my purpose to have told you the truth, and the truth I will tell you."

"If in your soil it takes, to heaven A thousand thousand thanks be given; And say with France, it goodly goes, Where the Pantagruelion grows."

"Certaine gayeté d'esprit conficte en mespris des choses fortuites."

"A son [Timon le Misanthrope] exemple ie denonce à ces calumniateurs diaboliques, que tous ayent à se pendre dedans le dernier chanteau de ceste lune. Ie les fourniray de licolz."

"Above the pitch, out of tune, and off the hinges."

"I'll go his halves."

"The Devil was sick, — the Devil a monk would be; The Devil was well, — the devil a monk was he."

"Do not believe what I tell you here any more than if it were some tale of a tub."

"I would have you call to mind the strength of the ancient giants, that undertook to lay the high mountain Pelion on the top of Ossa, and set among those the shady Olympus."

"Which was performed to a T."

"He that has patience may compass anything."

"We will take the good-will for the deed."

"You are Christians of the best edition, all picked and culled."

"Would you damn your precious soul?"

"Let us fly and save our bacon."

"Needs must when the Devil drives."

"Scampering as if the Devil drove them."

"He freshly and cheerfully asked him how a man should kill time."

"...l'estomach affamé n'a poinct d'aureilles, il n'oyt goutte."

"Whose cockloft is unfurnished."

"Come, pluck up a good heart; speak the truth and shame the devil."

"Plain as the nose in a man's face."

"Like hearts of oak."

"You shall never want rope enough."

"Looking as like...as one pea does like another."

"Nothing is so dear and precious as time."

"And thereby hangs a tale."

"It is meat, drink, and cloth to us."

"And so on to the end of the chapter."

"What is got over the Devil's back is spent under the belly."

"We have here other fish to fry."

"What cannot be cured must be endured."

"Thought I to myself, we shall never come off scot-free."

"It is enough to fright you out of your seven senses."

"Necessity has no law."

"Panurge had no sooner heard this, but he was upon the high-rope."

"On the third day the sky seemed to us somewhat clearer, and we happily arrived at the port of Mateotechny, not far distant from Queen Whims, alias the Quintessence. We met full butt on the quay a great number of guards and other military men that garrisoned the arsenal, and we were somewhat frighted at first because they made us all lay down our arms, and in a haughty manner asked us whence we came."

"What do you say? cried they; do you call it Entelechy or Endelechy? Truly, truly, sweet cousins, quoth Panurge, we are a silly sort of grout-headed lobcocks, an't please you; be so kind as to forgive us if we chance to knock words out of joint. As for anything else, we are downright honest fellows and true hearts."

"There has been here from other countries a pack of I know not what overweening self-conceited prigs, as moody as so many mules and as stout as any Scotch lairds, and nothing would serve these, forsooth, but they must wilfully wrangle and stand out against us at their coming; and much they got by it after all. Troth, we e'en fitted them and clawed 'em off with a vengeance, for all they looked so big and so grum. Pray tell me, does your time lie so heavy upon you in your world that you do not know how to bestow it better than in thus impudently talking, disputing, and writing of our sovereign lady?"

"Aristotle, that first of men and peerless pattern of all philosophy, was our sovereign lady's godfather, and wisely and properly gave her the name of Entelechy. Her true name then is Entelechy, and may he be in tail beshit, and entail a shit-a-bed faculty and nothing else on his family, who dares call her by any other name; for whoever he is, he does her wrong, and is a very impudent person. You are heartily welcome, gentlemen. With this they colled and clipped us about the neck, which was no small comfort to us, I'll assure you. Panurge then whispered me, Fellow-traveller, quoth he, hast thou not been somewhat afraid this bout? A little, said I. To tell you the truth of it, quoth he, never were the Ephraimites in a greater fear and quandary when the Gileadites killed and drowned them for saying sibboleth instead of shibboleth; and among friends, let me tell you that perhaps there is not a man in the whole country of Beauce but might easily have stopped my bunghole with a cartload of hay. The captain afterwards took us to the queen's palace, leading us silently with great formality. Pantagruel would have said something to him, but the other, not being able to come up to his height, wished for a ladder or a very long pair of stilts; then said, Patience, if it were our sovereign lady's will, we would be as tall as you; well, we shall when she pleases."

"The probity that scintillizes in the superfices of your persons informs my ratiocinating faculty, in a most stupendous manner, of the radiant virtues latent within the precious caskets and ventricles of your minds. For, contemplating the mellifluous suavity of your thrice discreet reverences, it is impossible not to be persuaded with facility that neither your affections nor your intellects are vitiated with any defect or privation of liberal and exalted sciences. Far from it, all must judge that in you are lodged a cornucopia and encyclopaedia, an unmeasurable profundity of knowledge in the most peregrine and sublime disciplines, so frequently the admiration, and so rarely the concomitants of the imperite vulgar. This gently compels me, who in preceding times indefatigably kept my private affections absolutely subjugated, to condescend to make my application to you in the trivial phrase of the plebeian world, and assure you that you are well, more than most heartily welcome."

"Queen Whims, or Queen Quintessence (which you please), perceiving that we stood as mute as fishes, said: Your taciturnity speaks you not only disciples of Pythagoras, from whom the venerable antiquity of my progenitors in successive propagation was emaned and derives its original, but also discovers, that through the revolution of many retrograde moons, you have in Egypt pressed the extremities of your fingers with the hard tenants of your mouths, and scalptized your heads with frequent applications of your unguicules. In the school of Pythagoras, taciturnity was the symbol of abstracted and superlative knowledge, and the silence of the Egyptians was agnited as an expressive manner of divine adoration; this caused the pontiffs of Hierapolis to sacrifice to the great deity in silence, impercussively, without any vociferous or obstreperous sound. My design is not to enter into a privation of gratitude towards you, but by a vivacious formality, though matter were to abstract itself from me, excentricate to you my cogitations. Having spoken this, she only said to her officers, Tabachins, a panacea; and straight they desired us not to take it amiss if the queen did not invite us to dine with her; for she never ate anything at dinner but some categories, jecabots, emnins, dimions, abstractions, harborins, chelemins, second intentions, carradoths, antitheses, metempsychoses, transcendent prolepsies, and such other light food."

"Pantagruel was telling me that he believed the queen had given the symbolic word used among her subjects to denote sovereign good cheer, when she said to her tabachins, A panacea."

"We saw a knot of others, about a baker's dozen."

"Others made a virtue of necessity."

"Spare your breath to cool your porridge."

"I believe he would make three bites of a cherry."

"Si d’un mort qui pourri repose Nature engendre quelque chose, Et si la generation Se fait de la corruption, Une vigne prendra naissance De l’estomac et de la pance Du bon Rabelais, qui boivoit Tousjours ce pendant qu’il vivoit."

"It must be laid down once and for all, that the chief purpose of reading a classic like Rabelais is to prop and stay the spirit, especially in moments of weakness and enervation, against the stress of life, to elevate it above the reach of commonplace annoyances and degradations, and to purge it of despondency and cynicism.... Rabelais is dynamogenous and illuminating; he lights up the humane life with the light of great joy, so that it shows itself as something lovely and infinitely desirable, by the side of which all other attainments fall automatically into their proper place as cheap, poor, and trivial. One closes with it gladly, joyfully, perceiving that for the sake of it all else that is lost is well lost."

"Achilles exists only through Homer. Take away the art of writing from this world, and you will probably take away its glory."

"I am Bourbon as a matter of honour, royalist according to reason and conviction, and republican by taste and character."

"In living literature no person is a competent judge but of works written in his own language. I have expressed my opinion concerning a number of English writers; it is very possible that I may be mistaken, that my admiration and my censure may be equally misplaced, and that my conclusions may appear impertinent and ridiculous on the other side of the Channel."

"Perfect works are rare, because they must be produced at the happy moment when taste and genius unite; and this rare conjuncture, like that of certain planets, appears to occur only after the revolution of several cycles, and only lasts for an instant."

"Aussitôt qu'une pensée vraie est entrée dans notre esprit, elle jette une lumière qui nous fait voir une foule d'autres objets que nous n'apercevions pas auparavant."

"Every institution goes through three stages — utility, privilege, and abuse."

"J'ai pleuré et j'ai cru."

"L’écrivain original n’est pas celui qui n’imite personne, mais celui que personne ne peut imiter."

"Though we have not employed the arguments usually advanced by the apologists of Christianity, we have arrived by a different chain of reasoning at the same conclusion: Christianity is perfect; men are imperfect. Now, a perfect consequence cannot spring from an imperfect principle. Christianity, therefore, is not the work of men. If Christianity is not the work of man, it can have come from none but God. If it came from God, men cannot have acquired a knowledge of it except by revelation. Therefore, Christianity is a revealed religion."

"I have explored the seas of the Old World and the New, and trodden the soil of the four quarters of the Earth. Having camped in the cabins of Iroquois, and beneath the tents of Arabs, in the wigwams of Hurons, in the remains of Athens, Jerusalem, Memphis, Carthage, Granada, among Greeks, Turks and Moors, among forests and ruins; after wearing the bearskin cloak of the savage, and the silk caftan of the Mameluke, after suffering poverty, hunger, thirst, and exile, I have sat, a minister and ambassador, covered with gold lace, gaudy with ribbons and decorations, at the table of kings, the feasts of princes and princesses, only to fall once more into indigence and know imprisonment."

"I have borne the musket of a soldier, the traveller’s cane, and the pilgrim’s staff: as a sailor my fate has been as inconstant as the wind: a kingfisher, I have made my nest among the waves. I have been party to peace and war: I have signed treaties, protocols, and along the way published numerous works. I have been made privy to party secrets, of court and state: I have viewed closely the rarest disasters, the greatest good fortune, the highest reputations. I have been present at sieges, congresses, conclaves, at the restoration and demolition of thrones. I have made history, and been able to write it. ... Within and alongside my age, perhaps without wishing or seeking to, I have exerted upon it a triple influence, religious, political and literary."

"Memory is often the attribute of stupidity; it generally belongs to heavy spirits whom it makes even heavier by the baggage it loads them down with."

"It is a long way from Combourg to Berlin, from a youthful dreamer to an old minister. I find among the words preceding these: ‘In how many places have I already continued writing these Memoirs, and in what place will I finish them?'"

"Aristocracy has three successive ages, — the age of superiorities, the age of privileges, and the age of vanities; having passed out of the first, it degenerates in the second, and dies away in the third."

"I halt at the beginning of my travels, in Pennsylvania, in order to compare Washington and Bonaparte. I would rather not have concerned myself with them until the point where I had met Napoleon; but if I came to the edge of my grave without having reached the year 1814 in my tale, no one would then know anything of what I would have written concerning these two representatives of Providence. I remember Castelnau: like me Ambassador to England, who wrote like me a narrative of his life in London. On the last page of Book VII, he says to his son: ‘I will deal with this event in Book VIII,’ and Book VIII of Castelnau’s Memoirs does not exist: that warns me to take advantage of being alive."

"A degree of silence envelops Washington’s actions; he moved slowly; one might say that he felt charged with future liberty, and that he feared to compromise it. It was not his own destiny that inspired this new species of hero: it was that of his country; he did not allow himself to enjoy what did not belong to him; but from that profound humility what glory emerged! Search the woods where Washington’s sword gleamed: what do you find? Tombs? No; a world! Washington has left the United States behind for a monument on the field of battle. Bonaparte shared no trait with that serious American: he fought amidst thunder in an old world; he thought about nothing but creating his own fame; he was inspired only by his own fate. He seemed to know that his project would be short, that the torrent which falls from such heights flows swiftly; he hastened to enjoy and abuse his glory, like fleeting youth. Following the example of Homer’s gods, in four paces he reached the ends of the world. He appeared on every shore; he wrote his name hurriedly in the annals of every people; he threw royal crowns to his family and his generals; he hurried through his monuments, his laws, his victories. Leaning over the world, with one hand he deposed kings, with the other he pulled down the giant, Revolution; but, in eliminating anarchy, he stifled liberty, and ended by losing his own on his last field of battle. Each was rewarded according to his efforts: Washington brings a nation to independence; a justice at peace, he falls asleep beneath his own roof in the midst of his compatriots’ grief and the veneration of nations. Bonaparte robs a nation of its independence: deposed as emperor, he is sent into exile, where the world’s anxiety still does not think him safely enough imprisoned, guarded by the Ocean. He dies: the news proclaimed on the door of the palace in front of which the conqueror had announced so many funerals, neither detains nor astonishes the passer-by: what have the citizens to mourn? Washington’s Republic lives on; Bonaparte’s empire is destroyed. Washington and Bonaparte emerged from the womb of democracy: both of them born to liberty, the former remained faithful to her, the latter betrayed her. Washington acted as the representative of the needs, the ideas, the enlightened men, the opinions of his age; he supported, not thwarted, the stirrings of intellect; he desired only what he had to desire, the very thing to which he had been called: from which derives the coherence and longevity of his work. That man who struck few blows because he kept things in proportion has merged his existence with that of his country: his glory is the heritage of civilisation; his fame has risen like one of those public sanctuaries where a fecund and inexhaustible spring flows."

"One does not learn how to die by killing others."

"My downfall made a great noise: those who appeared most satisfied criticized the manner of it."

"How small man is on this little atom where he dies! But how great his intelligence! He knows when the face of the stars must be masked in darkness, when the comets will return after thousands of years, he who lasts only an instant! A microscopic insect lost in a fold of the heavenly robe, the orbs cannot hide from him a single one of their movements in the depth of space. What destinies will those stars, new to us, light? Is their revelation bound up with some new phase of humanity? You will know, race to be born; I know not, and I am departing."

"New storms will arise; one can believe in calamities to come which will surpass the afflictions we have been overwhelmed by in the past; already, men are thinking of bandaging their old wounds to return to the battlefield. However, I do not expect an imminent outbreak of war: nations and kings are equally weary; unforeseen catastrophe will not yet fall on France: what follows me will only be the effect of general transformation. No doubt there will be painful moments: the face of the world cannot change without suffering. But, once again, there will be no separate revolutions; simply the great revolution approaching its end. The scenes of tomorrow no longer concern me; they call for other artists: your turn, gentlemen! As I write these last words, my window, which looks west over the gardens of the Foreign Mission, is open: it is six in the morning; I can see the pale and swollen moon; it is sinking over the spire of the Invalides, scarcely touched by the first golden glow from the East; one might say that the old world was ending, and the new beginning. I behold the light of a dawn whose sunrise I shall never see. It only remains for me to sit down at the edge of my grave; then I shall descend boldly, crucifix in hand, into eternity."

"A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both."

"He has abundant views on the future, particularly on the subject of religion and the social rôle which he believed it called upon to play. His influence on literature is unanimously acknowledged. Romanticism may be traced back to him, and it may even be said that the whole literary movement characteristic of the nineteenth century begins with him."

"In the twenty-sixth book of his Mémoires d'outre-tombe, Chateaubriand recounts his 1821 arrival at the French embassy in Berlin. He cites a flattering portrait of him written by the Baroness of Hohenhausen and published in the morning press on March 22: "M. de Chateaubriand is of a somewhat short, yet slender, stature. His oval face has an expression of reverence and melancholy. He has black hair and black eyes that glow with the fire of his mind." At this point, Chateaubriand flatly adds: "Mais j'ai les cheveux blancs; j'ai plus d'un siècle, en outre, je suis mort" ("But I have white hair; I am more than a century old, besides, I am dead") ... Of course, those startling words, "en outre, je suis mort" do not refer to the year 1821, nor to the time Chateaubriand is writing this account. Rather, they refer to the time we, readers, turn to this specific page of the Mémoires: as you are reading this, Chateaubriand reminds us, I am dead. The words wrest us away from the event he is relating, his arrival in Berlin, to remind us in the most direct terms that our reading of these words necessarily entails the death of their author. Moreover, the French en outre brings us back to the very title of the Mémoires d'outre-tombe: outre-tombe, from beyond the grave. In 1836, Chateaubriand signed a contract with a society of shareholders: in exchange for an immediate payment of 156,000 francs and a life annuity, he sold "the literary ownership of his Mémoires as they existed and as they would exist at his death." Commenting on this transaction, Maurice Levaillant notes: "With this agreement, Chateaubriand bought material security at the price of a concession that he never got over: instead of appearing after a period he had first prescribed as fifty years after his death, his Mémoires would suddenly appear, so to speak, live from his grave.""

"I will be Chateaubriand or nothing."

"I will be Chateaubriand or nothing."

"Behold, then, a new religion, a new society; upon this twofold foundation there must inevitably spring up a new poetry. Previously following therein the course pursued by the ancient polytheism and philosophy, the purely epic muse of the ancients had studied nature in only a single aspect, casting aside without pity almost everything in art which, in the world subjected to its imitation, had not relation to a certain type of beauty. A type which was magnificent at first, but, as always happens with everything systematic, became in later times false, trivial and conventional. Christianity leads poetry to the truth. Like it, the modern muse will see things in a higher and broader light. It will realize that everything in creation is not humanly beautiful, that the ugly exists beside the beautiful, the unshapely beside the graceful, the grotesque on the reverse of the sublime, evil with good, darkness with light. It will ask itself if the narrow and relative sense of the artist should prevail over the infinite, absolute sense of the Creator; if it is for man to correct God; if a mutilated nature will be the more beautiful for the mutilation; if art has the right to duplicate, so to speak, man, life, creation; if things will progress better when their muscles and their vigour have been taken from them; if, in short, to be incomplete is the best way to be harmonious. Then it is that, with its eyes fixed upon events that are both laughable and redoubtable, and under the influence of that spirit of Christian melancholy and philosophical criticism which we described a moment ago, poetry will take a great step, a decisive step, a step which, like the upheaval of an earthquake, will change the whole face of the intellectual world. It will set about doing as nature does, mingling in its creations — but without confounding them — darkness and light, the grotesque and the sublime; in other words, the body and the soul, the beast and the intellect; for the starting-point of religion is always the starting-point of poetry. All things are connected. Thus, then, we see a principle unknown to the ancients, a new type, introduced in poetry; and as an additional element in anything modifies the whole of the thing, a new form of the art is developed. This type is the grotesque; its new form is comedy."

"Ces deux moitiés de Dieu, le pape et l'empereur!"

"Dieu s'est fait homme; soit. Le diable s'est fait femme!"

"La raison, c'est l'intelligence en exercice; l'imagination c'est l'intelligence en érection"

"Socialism, or the Red Republic, is all one; for it would tear down the tricolour and set up the red flag. It would make penny pieces out of the Column Vendome. It would knock down the statue of Napoleon and raise up that of Marat in its stead. It would suppress the Académie, the Ecole Polytechnique, and the Legion of Honour. To the grand device Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, it would add "Ou la mort. It would bring about a general bankruptcy. It would ruin the rich without enriching the poor. It would destroy labour, which gives to each one his bread. It would abolish property and family. It would march about with the heads of the proscribed on pikes, fill the prisons with the suspected, and empty them by massacres. It would convert France into the country of gloom. It would strangle liberty, stifle the arts, silence thought, and deny God. It would bring into action these two fatal machines, one of which never works without the other—the assignat press and the guillotine. In a word, it would do in cold blood what the men of 1793 did in fever, and after the grand horrors which our fathers saw, we should have the horrible in all that was low and small."

"Vous tenez à l’exemple [de la peine de mort]. Pourquoi? Pour ce qu’il enseigne. Que voulez-vous enseigner avec votre exemple? Qu’il ne faut pas tuer. Et comment enseignez-vous qu’il ne faut pas tuer? En tuant."

"Un jour viendra où il n'y aura plus d'autres champs de bataille que les marchés s'ouvrant au commerce et les esprits s'ouvrant aux idées. Un jour viendra où les boulets et les bombes seront remplacés par les votes, par le suffrage universel des peuples, par le vénérable arbitrage d'un grand sénat souverain qui sera à l'Europe ce que le parlement est à l'Angleterre, ce que la diète est à l'Allemagne, ce que l'assemblée législative est à la France! Un jour viendra où l'on montrera un canon dans les musées comme on y montre aujourd'hui un instrument de torture, en s'étonnant que cela ait pu être! Un jour viendra où l'on verra ces deux groupes immenses, les États-Unis d'Amérique, les États-Unis d'Europe, placés en face l'un de l'autre, se tendant la main par-dessus les mers, échangeant leurs produits, leur commerce, leur industrie, leurs arts, leurs génies, défrichant le globe, colonisant les déserts, améliorant la création sous le regard du créateur, et combinant ensemble, pour en tirer le bien-être de tous, ces deux forces infinies, la fraternité des hommes et la puissance de Dieu!"

"One can no more pray too much than love too much."

"Happy, even in anguish, is he to whom God has given a soul worthy of love and of grief!"

"The best way to worship God is to love your wife."

"To love or to have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life. To love is a consummation."

"Il y a maintenant en France dans chaque village un flambeau allumé, le maître d'école, et une bouche qui souffle dessus, le curé."

"Je n'entre qu'à moitié dans la guerre civile. Je veux bien y mourir, je ne veux pas y tuer."

"On résiste à l'invasion des armées; on ne résiste pas à l'invasion des idées."

"Waterloo! Waterloo! Waterloo! Morne plaine!"

"L'œil était dans la tombe et regardait Caïn."

"Vous créez un frisson nouveau."

"Jésus a pleuré, Voltaire a souri; c’est de cette larme divine et de ce sourire humain qu’est faite la douceur de la civilisation actuelle."

"For four hundred years the human race has not made a step but what has left its plain vestige behind. We enter now upon great centuries. The sixteenth century will be known as the age of painters, the seventeenth will be termed the age of writers, the eighteenth the age of philosophers, the nineteenth the age of apostles and prophets. To satisfy the nineteenth century, it is necessary to be the painter of the sixteenth, the writer of the seventeenth, the philosopher of the eighteenth; and it is also necessary, like Louis Blane, to have the innate and holy love of humanity which constitutes an apostolate, and opens up a prophetic vista into the future. In the twentieth century war will be dead, the scaffold will be dead, animosity will be dead, royalty will be dead, and dogmas will be dead; but Man will live. For all there will be but one country—that country the whole earth; for all there will be but one hope—that hope the whole heaven."

"Was it possible that Napoleon should win the battle of Waterloo? We answer, No! Why? Because of Wellington? Because of Blücher? No! Because of God! For Bonaparte to conquer at Waterloo was not the law of the nineteenth century. It was time that this vast man should fall. He had been impeached before the Infinite! He had vexed God! Waterloo was not a battle. It was the change of front of the Universe!"

"Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots."

"C'est ici le combat du jour et de la nuit... Je vois de la lumière noire."

"There shall be no slavery of the mind."

"Lever à six, coucher à dix, Dîner à dix, souper à six, Font vivre l'homme dix fois dix."

"Ce besoin de l’immatériel est le plus vivace de tous. Il faut du pain; mais avant le pain, il faut l’idéal."

"Je représente un parti qui n'existe pas encore, le parti Révolution-Civilisation. Ce parti fera le vingtième siècle. Il en sortira d'abord les États-Unis d'Europe, puis les États-Unis du Monde."

"To divinise is human, to humanise is divine."

"Philosophy is the microscope of thought. Everything desires to flee from it, but nothing escapes it."

"Les Misérables"

"Aimer, c'est agir"

"Oriental studies have never been so intensive.... In the century of Louis XIV one was a Hellenist, today one is an Orientalist.... The Orient has become a sort of general preoccupation.... We shall see great things. The old Asiatic barbarism may not be as devoid of higher men as our civilization would like to believe."

"À quelle heure, s'il vous plaît?"

"Vous avez des ennemis? Mais c'est l'histoire de tout homme qui a fait une action grande ou crée une idée neuve. C'est la nuée qui bruit autour de tout ce qui brille. Il faut que la renommé ait des ennemis comme il faut que la lumière ait des moucherons. Ne vous en inquiétez pas, dédaignez! Ayez la sérénité dans votre esprit comme vous avez la limpidité dans votre vie."

"It is time, we repeat, that this monstrous slumber of men's consciences should end. It must not be, after that fearful scandal, the triumph of crime, that a scandal still more fearful should be presented to mankind: the indifference of the civilized world. Book I, III"

"At certain epochs of history, there are pleiades of great men; at other epochs, there are pleiades of vagabonds. But do not confound the epoch, the moment of Louis Bonaparte, with the 19th century: the toadstool sprouts at the foot of the oak, but it is not the oak. Book I, VI"

"At certain epochs in history, the whole human race, from all points of the earth, fix their eyes upon some mysterious spot whence it seems that universal destiny is about to issue. Book I, VI"

"Alas! of what is France thinking? Of a surety, we must awake this slumbering nation, we must take it by the arm, we must shake it, we must speak to it; we must scour the fields, enter the villages, go into the barracks, speak to the soldier who no longer knows what he is doing, speak to the labourer who has in his cabin an engraving of the Emperor, and who, for that reason, votes for everything they ask; we must remove the radiant phantom that dazzles their eyes; this whole situation is nothing but a huge and deadly joke. Book I, VI"

"Let us sum up this government! Who is at the Élysée and the Tuileries? Crime. Who is established at the Luxembourg? Baseness. Who at the Palais Bourbon? Imbecility. Who at the Palais d'Orsay?...And who are in the prisons... in the dungeons...in exile? Law, honour, intelligence, liberty, and the right. Book I, VI"

"The present government is a hand stained with blood, which dips a finger in the holy water. Book II, X"

"We who combat them are "the eternal enemies of order." We are—for they can as yet find nothing but this worn-out word—we are demagogues. In the language of the Duke of Alva, to believe in the sacredness of the human conscience, to resist the Inquisition, to brave the state for one's faith, to draw the sword for one's country, to defend one's worship, one's city, one's home, one's house, one's family, and one's God, was called vagabondism... The man is a demagogue in the nineteenth century, who in the sixteenth would have been a vagabond. Book II, XI"

"This tribune was the terror of every tyranny and fanaticism, it was the hope of every one who was oppressed under Heaven. Whoever placed his foot upon that height, felt distinctly the pulsations of the great heart of mankind. There, providing he was a man of earnest purpose, his soul swelled within him, and shone without. A breath of universal philanthropy seized him, and filled his mind as the breeze fills the sail; so long as his feet rested upon those four planks, he was a stronger and a better man; he felt at that consecrated minute as if he were living the life of all the nations; words of charity for all men came to his lips; beyond the Assembly, grouped at his feet, and frequently in a tumult, he beheld the people, attentive, serious, with ears strained, and fingers on lips; and beyond the people, the human race, plunged in thought, seated in circles, and listening. Book V, V"

"From this tribune, incessantly vibrating, gushed forth perpetually a sort of sonorous flood, a mighty oscillation of sentiments and ideas, which, from billow to billow, and from people to people, flowed to the utmost confines of the earth, to set in motion those intelligent waves which are called souls. Book V, V"

"Two great problems hang over the world. War must disappear, and conquest must continue. These two necessities of a growing civilization seemed to exclude each other. How satisfy the one without failing the other? Book V, VII"

"Now it is all over. The great work is accomplished. And the results of the work!...Get all you can, gorge yourselves, grow a fat paunch; it is no longer a question of being a great people, of being a powerful people, of being a free nation, of casting a bright light; France no longer sees its way to that. Book V, IX"

"Now there is no more noise, no more confusion, no more talking, no more parliament, or parliamentarism. The Corps Législatif, the Senate, the Council of State, have all had their mouths sewn up. Book V, IX"

"Be proud, Frenchmen! Lift high your heads, Frenchmen! You are no longer anything, and this man is everything! He holds in his hand your intelligence, as a child holds a bird. Any day he pleases, he can strangle the genius of France. Book V, IX"

"The orator resumes: "And if it should happen some day that a man, having in his hand the five hundred thousand officeholders who constitute the government, and the four hundred thousand soldiers composing the army, if it should happen that this man should tear up the Constitution, should violate every law, break every oath, trample upon every right, commit every crime, do you know what your irremovable magistrates, instructors in the right, and guardians of the law, would do? They would hold their tongues." Book VIII, IV"

"From every agglomeration of men, from every city, from every nation, there inevitably arises a collective force. Place this collective force at the service of liberty, let it rule by universal suffrage, the city becomes a commune, the nation becomes a republic. This collective force is not, of its nature, intelligent. Belonging to all, it belongs to no one; it floats about, so to speak, outside of the people. Conclusion, Part First, II"

"There is... always, in a large population like that of France, a class which is ignorant, which suffers, covets, and struggles, placed between the brutish instinct which impels it to take, and the moral law which invites it to labour. In the grievous and oppressed condition in which it still is, this class, in order to maintain itself in probity and well-doing, requires all the pure and holy light that emanates from the Gospel; it requires that, on the one hand, the spirit of Jesus Christ, and, on the other, the spirit of the French Revolution, should address to it the same manly words, and should never cease to point out to it, as the only lights worthy of the eyes of man, the exalted and mysterious laws of human destiny,—self-denial, devotion, sacrifice, the labour which leads to material well-being, the probity which leads to inward well-being; even with this perennial instruction, at once divine and human, this class, so worthy of sympathy and fraternity, often succumbs. Conclusion, Part First, III"

"On the day when the human conscience shall lose its bearings, on the day when success shall carry the day before that forum, all will be at an end. The last moral gleam will reascend to heaven. Darkness will be in the mind of man. You will have nothing to do but to devour one another, wild beasts that you are! Conclusion, Part First, III"

"With moral degradation goes political degradation. Conclusion, Part First, III"

"They determined, once for all, to make an end of the spirit of freedom and emancipation, and to drive back and repress for ever the upward tendency of mankind. To undo the labour of twenty generations; to kill in the nineteenth century, by strangulation... Luther, Descartes, and Voltaire, religious scrutiny, philosophical scrutiny, universal scrutiny; to crush throughout all Europe this immense vegetation of free thought, here a tender blade, there a sturdy oak; ...to resuscitate all they could of the Inquisition, and to stifle all they could of intelligence; to stultify youth, in other words to brutalize the future;... to say to nations: "Eat and think no more;".... Conclusion, Part Second, I"

"There was a nation among the nations, which was a sort of elder brother in this family of the oppressed, a prophet in the human tribe. This nation took the initiative of the whole human movement. It went on, saying, "Come!" and the rest followed. As a complement to the fraternity of men, in the Gospel, it taught the fraternity of nations. It spoke by the voice of its writers, of its poets, of its philosophers, of its orators, as by a single mouth, and its words flew to the extremities of the earth, to rest, like tongues of fire, upon the brow of all nations. It presided over the communion of intellects. Conclusion, Part Second, I"

"Now it is all over. The French nation is dead. Conclusion, Part Second, I"

"Let us have faith. No, let us not be cast down. To despair is to desert. Let us look to the future. The future,—no one knows what tempests still separate us from port, but the port, the distant and radiant port, is in sight; the future, we repeat, is the republic for all men; let us add, the future is peace with all men. Conclusion, Part Second, II"

"Let us not fall into the vulgar error, which is to curse and to dishonour the age in which we live. However deep the shame of the present, whatever blows we receive from the fluctuation of events, whatever the apparent desertion or the momentary lethargy of mental vigour, none of us... will repudiate the magnificent epoch in which we live, the virile age of mankind. Conclusion, Part Second, II"

"Let us proclaim it aloud, let us proclaim it in our fall and in our defeat, this is the greatest of all ages! and do you know the reason why? because it is the mildest. This age, the immediate issue, the firstborn offspring, of the French Revolution, frees the slave in America, raises from his degradation the pariah in Asia, abolishes the suttee in India, and extinguishes in Europe the last brands of the stake, civilizes Turkey, carries the Gospel into the domain of the Koran, dignifies woman, subordinates the right of the strongest to that of the most just, suppresses pirates, mitigates sentences, makes the galleys healthy, throws the red-hot iron into the sewer, condemns the penalty of death, removes the ball and chain from the leg of the convict, abolishes torture, degrades and brands war, stifles Dukes of Alva and Charles the Ninths, and extracts the claws of tyrants. Conclusion, Part Second, II"

"This age proclaims the sovereignty of the citizen, and the inviolability of life; it crowns the people, and consecrates man. In art, it possesses all varieties of genius,—writers, orators, poets, historians, publicists, philosophers, painters, sculptors, musicians; majesty, grace, power, force, splendour, colour, form, style; it renews its strength in the real and in the ideal, and bears in its hand the two thunderbolts, the true and the beautiful. In science it accomplishes unheard-of miracles; it makes of cotton salt petre, of steam a horse, of the voltaic battery a workman, of the electric fluid a messenger, of the sun a painter; it waters itself with subterranean streams, pending the time when it shall warm itself with the central fire; it opens upon the two infinites those two windows, the telescope upon the infinitely great, the microscope upon the infinitely little, and it finds stars in the first abyss, and insects in the second, which prove to it the existence of God... It annihilates time, it annihilates space, it annihilates suffering; it writes a letter from Paris to London, and has an answer in ten minutes; it cuts off a man's leg, the man sings and smiles. Conclusion, Part Second, II"

"This was the work that the nineteenth century had done among men, and was continuing in glorious, fashion to do,—that century of sterility, that century of domination, that century of decadence, that century of degradation, as it is called by the pedants, the rhetoricians, the imbeciles, and all that filthy brood of bigots, of knaves, and of sharpers, who sanctimoniously slaver gall upon glory, who assert that Pascal was a madman, Voltaire a coxcomb, and Rousseau a brute, and whose triumph it would be to put a fool's-cap upon the human race. Conclusion, Part Second, II"

"O my country! it is at this moment, when I see you bleeding, inanimate, your head hanging, your eyes closed, your mouth open, and no words issuing therefrom, the marks of the whip upon your shoulders, the nails of the executioner's shoes imprinted upon your body, naked and ashamed, and like a thing deprived of life, an object of hatred, of derision, alas! it is at this moment, my country, that the heart of the exile overflows with love and respect for you! Conclusion, Part Second, II"

"Vous avez raison, monsieur, quand vous me dites que le livre les Misérables est écrit pour tous les peuples. Je ne sais s'il sera lu par tous, mais je l'ai écrit pour tous. Il s'adresse à l'Angleterre autant qu'à l'Espagne, à l'Italie autant qu'à la France, à l'Allemagne autant qu'à l'Irlande, aux républiques qui ont des esclaves aussi bien qu'aux empires qui ont des serfs. Les problèmes sociaux dépassent les frontières. Les plaies du genre humain, ces larges plaies qui couvrent le globe, ne s'arrêtent point aux lignes bleues ou rouges tracées sur la mappemonde. Partout où l'homme ignore et désespère, partout où la femme se vend pour du pain, partout où l'enfant souffre faute d'un livre qui l'enseigne et d'un foyer qui le réchauffe, le livre les Misérables frappe à la porte et dit: Ouvrez-moi, je viens pour vous."

"À l'heure, si sombre encore, de la civilisation où nous sommes, le misérable s'appelle L'HOMME; il agonise sous tous les climats, et il gémit dans toutes les langues."

"Du fond de l'ombre où nous sommes et où vous êtes, vous ne voyez pas beaucoup plus distinctement que nous les radieuses et lointaines portes de l'éden. Seulement les prêtres se trompent. Ces portes saintes ne sont pas derrière nous, mais devant nous."

"Ce livre, les Misérables, n'est pas moins que votre miroir que le nôtre. Certains hommes, certaines castes, se révoltent contre ce livre, je le comprends. Les miroirs, ces diseurs de vérité, sont haïs; cela ne les empêche pas d'être utiles. Quant à moi, j'ai écrit pour tous, avec un profond amour pour mon pays, mais sans me préoccuper de la France plus que d'un autre peuple. A mesure que j'avance dans la vie je me simplifie, et je deviens de plus en plus patriote de l'humanité."

"En somme, je fais ce que je peux, je souffre de la souffrance universelle, et je tâche de la soulager, je n'ai que les chétives forces d'un homme, et je crie à tous: aidez-moi."

"Italiens ou français, la misère nous regarde tous. Depuis que l'histoire écrit et que la philosophie médite, la misère est le vêtement du genre humain; le moment serait enfin venu d'arracher cette guenille, et de remplacer, sur les membres nus de l'Homme-Peuple, la loque sinistre du passé par la grande robe pourpre de l'aurore."

"Dieu se manifeste à nous au premier degré à travers la vie de l’univers, et au deuxième degré à travers la pensée de l’homme. La deuxième manifestation n’est pas moins sacrée que la première. La première s’appelle la Nature, la deuxième s’appelle l’Art."

"Homère est un des génies qui résolvent ce beau problème de l’art, le plus beau de tous peut-être, la peinture vraie de l’humanité obtenue par le grandissement de l’homme, c’est-à-dire la génération du réel dans l’idéal."

"Que l'avenir soit un orient au lieu d'être un couchant, c'est la consolation de l'homme."

"La musique...est la vapeur de l’art. Elle est à la poésie ce que la rêverie est à la pensée, ce que le fluide est au liquide, ce que l’océan des nuées est à l’océan des ondes."

"Ce qu’on ne peut dire et ce qu’on ne peut taire, la musique l’exprime."

"They had done him the honor to take him for a madman, but had set him free on discovering that he was only a poet."

"It is very fortunate that kings cannot err. Hence their contradictions never perplex us."

"Mettre tout en équilibre, c'est bien; mettre tout en harmonie, c'est mieux."

"Cimourdain was a pure-minded but gloomy man. He had "the absolute" within him. He had been a priest, which is a solemn thing. Man may have, like the sky, a dark and impenetrable serenity; that something should have caused night to fall in his soul is all that is required. Priesthood had been the cause of night within Cimourdain. Once a priest, always a priest. Whatever causes night in our souls may leave stars. Cimourdain was full of virtues and truth, but they shine out of a dark background."

"Cimourdain was one of those men who have a voice within them, and who listen to it. Such men seem absent-minded; they are not; they are all attention. Cimourdain knew everything and nothing. He knew everything about science, and nothing at all about life. Hence his inflexibility. His eyes were bandaged like Homer's Themis. He had the blind certainty of the arrow, which sees only the mark and flies to it. In a revolution, nothing is more terrible than a straight line. Cimourdain went straight ahead, as sure as fate. Cimourdain believed that, in social geneses, the extreme point is the solid earth; an error peculiar to minds which replace reason with logic."

"He who is a legend in his own time is ruled by that legend. It may begin in absolute innocence, but, to cover up flaws and maintain the myth of Divine Power, one must employ desperate measures."

"I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses."

"Et la marine va, papa, venir à Malte."

"He who opens a school, closes a prison"

"There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come."

"I am reading Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. A book which I remember of old, but I had a great longing to read it again. It is very beautiful, that figure of Monseigneur Myriel or Bienvenu I think sublime....It is good to read such a book again, I think, just to keep some feelings allive. Especially love for humanity, and the faith in, and consciousness of, something higher, in short, quelque chose là-huat."

"Hugo, like a priest, always has his head bowed -- bowed so low that he can see nothing except his own navel."

"In Hugo is maybe where I learned the freedom to be discursive, to trust that there will be readers who can accept long sentences, and long meanings. In the nineteenth century quite ordinary readers could do that."

"Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo."

"A glittering humbug."

"("Who is the greatest French poet?") Victor Hugo, alas!"

"Victor Hugo has spoken of the nineteenth century as being woman's era, and among the most noticeable epochs in this era is the uprising of women against the twin evils of slavery and intemperance, which had foisted themselves like leeches upon the civilization of the present age."

"I admire Victor Hugo -- I appreciate his genius, his brilliancy, his romanticism; though he is not one of my literary passions. But Hugo and Goethe and Schiller and all great poets of all great nations are interpreters of eternal things, and my spirit reverently follows them into the regions where Beauty and Truth and Goodness are one."

"For the triumph of the cause of my sex, I hope only that men will be slightly less intolerant and women slightly more supportive of each other. Perhaps, at that point, the prophecy of the greatest poet of our century, Victor Hugo, will be realized: he predicted of woman what William Ewart Gladstone predicted of the factory worker-that the nineteenth century would be the "Century of the Woman.""

"Victor Hugo in alluding to this effort on the part of woman for the redress of the wrongs and grievances under which she had suffered, says, that as the last age was notable for the effort to gain Men’s Rights, so the present generation would aim to create a revolution in public sentiment which should gain the independence of woman."

"The first romantics were seers without even really realizing it: their soul's education began by accident: abandoned trains still smoking, occasionally taking to the tracks. Lamartine was a seer now and again, but strangling on old forms. Hugo, too pigheaded, certainly saw in his most recent works: Les Misérables is really a poem. I've got Les Chatiments with me; Stella gives some sense of Hugo's vision. Too much Belmontet and Lamennais with their Jehovahs and colonnades, massive crumbling edifices."

"I was exposed to Dickens, Dumas, Victor Hugo, de Maupassant, Balzac."

"Hugo, optimism incarnate, the vatic poet, recognised by God as the only worthy interlocutor, the courageous defender of the Communards...this cantor of the poor, the only one who was- and still is- read by the working classes,... this astonishing man: half priest and half anarchist, incontestable sovereign of the century."

"Even our misfortunes are a part of our belongings"

"Les pierres du chantier ne sont en vrac qu’en apparence, s’il est, perdu dans le chantier, un homme, serait-il seul, qui pense cathédrale."

"Toute nation est égoïste. Toute nation considère son égoïsme comme sacré."

"If it is true that wars are won by believers, it is also true that peace treaties are sometimes signed by businessmen."

""Navigating by the compass in a sea of clouds over Spain is all very well, it is very dashing, but—" And I was struck by the graphic image: "But you want to remember that below the sea of clouds lies eternity." And suddenly that tranquil cloud-world, that world so harmless and simple that one sees below on rising out of the clouds, took on in my eyes a new quality. That peaceful world became a pitfall. I imagined the immense white pitfall spread beneath me. Below it reigned not what one might think — not the agitation of men, not the living tumult and bustle of cities, but a silence even more absolute than in the clouds, a peace even more final. This viscous whiteness became in my mind the frontier between the real and the unreal, between the known and the unknowable. Already I was beginning to realize that a spectacle has no meaning except it be seen through the glass of a culture, a civilization, a craft. Mountaineers too know the sea of clouds, yet it does not seem to them the fabulous curtain it is to me."

"I had a vision of the face of destiny. Old bureaucrat, my comrade, it is not you who are to blame. No one ever helped you to escape. You, like a termite, built your peace by blocking up with cement every chink and cranny through which the light might pierce. You rolled yourself up into a ball in your genteel security, in routine, in the stifling conventions of provincial life, raising a modest rampart against the winds and the tides and the stars. You have chosen not to be perturbed by great problems, having trouble enough to forget your own fate as man. You are not the dweller upon an errant planet and do not ask yourself questions to which there are no answers. You are a petty bourgeois of Toulouse. Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning. The squall has ceased to be a cause of my complaint. The magic of the craft has opened for me a world in which I shall confront, within two hours, the black dragons and the crowned crests of a coma of blue lightnings, and when night has fallen I, delivered, shall read my course in the stars."

"Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded. These prison walls that this age of trade has built up round us, we can break down. We can still run free, call to our comrades, and marvel to hear once more, in response to our call, the impassioned chant of the human voice."

"Être homme, c'est précisément être responsable. C'est connaître la honte en face d'une misère qui ne semblait pas dépendre de soi. C'est être fier d'une victoire que les camarades ont remportée. C'est sentir, en posant sa pierre, que l'on contribue à bâtir le monde."

"Have you looked at a modern airplane? Have you followed from year to year the evolution of its lines? Have you ever thought, not only about the airplane but about whatever man builds, that all of man's industrial efforts, all his computations and calculations, all the nights spent over working draughts and blueprints, invariably culminate in the production of a thing whose sole and guiding principle is the ultimate principle of simplicity? It is as if there were a natural law which ordained that to achieve this end, to refine the curve of a piece of furniture, or a ship's keel, or the fuselage of an airplane, until gradually it partakes of the elementary purity of the curve of a human breast or shoulder, there must be the experimentation of several generations of craftsmen. In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness."

"Precisely because it is perfect the machine dissembles its own existence instead of forcing itself upon our notice. And thus, also, the realities of nature resume their pride of place. It is not with metal that the pilot is in contact. Contrary to the vulgar illusion, it is thanks to the metal, and by virtue of it, that the pilot rediscovers nature. As I have already said, the machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them. Numerous, nevertheless, are the moralists who have attacked the machine as the source of all the ills we bear, who, creating a fictitious dichotomy, have denounced the mechanical civilization as the enemy of the spiritual civilization. If what they think were really so, then indeed we should have to despair of man, for it would be futile to struggle against this new advancing chaos. The machine is certainly as irresistible in its advance as those virgin forests that encroach upon equatorial domains."

"Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures — in this century, as in others, our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together. Do our dreamers hold that the invention of writing, of printing, of the sailing ship, degraded the human spirit? It seems to me that those who complain of man's progress confuse ends with means. True, that man who struggles in the unique hope of material gain will harvest nothing worth while. But how can anyone conceive that the machine is an end? It is a tool. As much a tool as is the plough. The microscope is a tool. What disservice do we do the life of the spirit when we analyze the universe through a tool created by the science of optics, or seek to bring together those who love one another and are parted in space?"

""I swear that what I went through, no animal would have gone through." This sentence, the noblest ever spoken, this sentence that defines man's place in the universe, that honors him, that re-establishes the true hierarchy, floated back into my thoughts."

"Human drama does not show itself on the surface of life. It is not played out in the visible world, but in the hearts of men. … One man in misery can disrupt the peace of a city. It is another of the miraculous things about mankind that there is no pain nor passion that does not radiate to the ends of the earth. Let a man in a garret but burn with enough intensity and he will set fire to the world."

"No man can draw a free breath who does not share with other men a common and disinterested ideal. Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction. There is no comradeship except through union in the same high effort. Even in our age of material well-being this must be so, else how should we explain the happiness we feel in sharing our last crust with others in the desert? No sociologist's textbook can prevail against this fact. Every pilot who has flown to the rescue of a comrade in distress knows that all joys are vain in comparison with this one. And this, it may be, is the reason why the world today is tumbling about our ears. It is precisely because this sort of fulfilment is promised each of us by his religion, that men are inflamed today. All of us, in words that contradict each other, express at bottom the same exalted impulse. What sets us against one another is not our aims — they all come to the same thing — but our methods, which are the fruit of our varied reasoning. Let us, then, refrain from astonishment at what men do. One man finds that his essential manhood comes alive at the sight of self-sacrifice, cooperative effort, a rigorous vision of justice, manifested in an anarchist's cellar in Barcelona. For that man there will henceforth be but one truth — the truth of the anarchists. Another, having once mounted guard over a flock of terrified little nuns kneeling in a Spanish nunnery, will thereafter know a different truth — that it is sweet to die for the Church. If, when Mermoz plunged into the Chilean Andes with victory in his heart, you had protested to him that no merchant's letter could possibly be worth risking one's life for, Mermoz would have laughed in your face. Truth is the man that was born in Mermoz when he slipped through the Andean passes."

"Voici mon secret. Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux."

"Les grandes personnes ne comprennent jamais rien toutes seules, et c'est fatigant, pour les enfants, de toujours leur donner des explications."

"Ce qui embellit le désert, dit le petit prince, c'est qu'il cache un puits quelque part..."

"L'avenir, tu n'as point à le prévoir mais à le permettre."

"Ne confonds point l’amour avec le délire de la possession, lequel apporte les pires souffrances. Car au contraire de l’opinion commune, l’amour ne fait point souffrir. Mais l’instinct de propriété fait souffrir, qui est le contraire de l’amour."

"[...] Car une civilisation repose sur ce qui est exigé des hommes, non sur ce qui leur est fourni."

"A goal without a plan is just a wish."

"If you wish to build a ship, do not divide the men into teams and send them to the forest to cut wood. Instead, teach them to long for the vast and endless sea."

"If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."

"If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men and women to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea."

"La beauté sera CONVULSIVE ou ne sera pas."

"Beauty will be CONVULSIVE or not at all."

"Pure psychic automatism, by which one seeks to express, be it verbally, in writing, or in any other manner, (is) the real working of the mind. Dictated by the unconsciousness, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, and free from aesthetic or moral preoccupations."

"I was asked to make a report on the Italian situation to this special committee of the 'gas cell', which made it clear to me that I was to stick to the statistical facts (steel production etc.) and above all not to get involved with ideology. I couldn't do it."

"[T]his cancer of the mind which consists of thinking all too sadly that certain things 'are' while others, which well might be, 'are not'."

"Children set off each day without a worry in the world. Everything is near at hand; the worst material conditions are fine. The woods are white or black, one will never sleep."

"So strong is the belief in life, in what is most fragile in life — real life, I mean — that in the end this belief is lost. Man, that inveterate dreamer, daily more discontent with his destiny, has trouble assessing the objects he has been led to use, objects that his nonchalance has brought his way, or that he has earned through his own efforts, almost always through his own efforts, for he has agreed to work, at least he has not refused to try his luck (or what he calls his luck!). At this point he feels extremely modest: he knows what women he has had, what silly affairs he has been involved in; he is unimpressed by his wealth or his poverty, in this respect he is still a new-born babe and, as for the approval of his conscience, I confess that he does very nicely without it. If he still retains a certain lucidity, all he can do is turn back toward his childhood which, however his guides and mentors may have botched it, still strikes him as somehow charming. There, the absence of any known restrictions allows him the perspective of several lives lived at once; this illusion becomes firmly rooted within him; now he is only interested in the fleeting, the extreme facility of everything."

"But it is true that we would not dare venture so far, it is not merely a question of distance. Threat is piled upon threat, one yields, abandons a portion of the terrain to be conquered. This imagination which knows no bounds is henceforth allowed to be exercised only in strict accordance with the laws of an arbitrary utility; it is incapable of assuming this inferior role for very long and, in the vicinity of the twentieth year, generally prefers to abandon man to his lusterless fate."

"Beloved imagination, what I most like in you is your unsparing quality. There remains madness, 'the madness that one locks up', as it has aptly been described. That madness or another.."

"We all know, in fact, that the insane.. ..derive a great deal of comfort and consolation from their imagination, that they enjoy their madness sufficiently to endure the thought that its validity does not extend beyond themselves. And, indeed, hallucinations, illusions, etc., are not a source of trifling pleasure... These people are honest to a fault, and their 'naiveté' has no peer but my own. Christopher Columbus should have set out to discover America with a boatload of madmen. And note how this madness has taken shape, and endured."

"It is not the fear of madness which will oblige us to leave the flag of imagination furled."

"We are still living under the reign of logic: this, of course, is what I have been driving at. But in this day and age logical methods are applicable only to solving problems of secondary interest. The absolute rationalism that is still in vogue allows us to consider only facts relating directly to our experience. Logical ends, on the contrary, escape us. It is pointless to add that experience itself has found itself increasingly circumscribed. It paces back and forth in a cage from which it is more and more difficult to make it emerge. It too leans for support on what is most immediately expedient, and it is protected by the sentinels of common sense."

"I could spend my whole life prying loose the secrets of the insane. These people are honest to a fault, and their naivety has no peer but my own."

"Surrealism will usher you into death, which is a secret society. It will glove your hand, burying therein the profound M with which the word Memory begins. Do not forget to make proper arrangements for your last will and testament: speaking personally, I ask that I be taken to the cemetery in a moving van. May my friends destroy every last copy of the printing of the Speech concerning the Modicum of Reality."

"If the depths of our mind contain within it strange forces capable of augmenting those on the surface, or of waging a victorious battle against them, there is every reason to seize them - first to seize them, then, if need be, to submit them to the control of our reason. The analysts themselves have everything to gain by it. But it is worth noting that no means has been designated a priori for carrying out this undertaking, that until further notice it can be construed to be the province of poets as well as scholars, and that its success is not dependent upon the more or less capricious paths that will be followed."

"Freud very rightly brought his critical faculties to bear upon the dream. It is, in fact, inadmissible that this considerable portion of psychic activity (since, at least from man’s birth until his death, thought offers no solution of continuity, the sum of the moments of the dream, from the point of view of time, and taking into consideration only the time of pure dreaming, that is the dreams of sleep, is not inferior to the sum of the moments of reality, or, to be more precisely limiting, the moments of waking) has still today been so grossly neglected."

"I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams. It is because man, when he ceases to sleep, is above all the plaything of his memory, and in its normal state memory takes pleasure in weakly retracing for him the circumstances of the dream, in stripping it of any real importance, and in dismissing the only determinant from the point where he thinks he has left it a few hours before: this firm hope, this concern. He is under the impression of continuing something that is worthwhile. Thus the dream finds itself reduced to a mere parenthesis, as is the night. And, like the night, dreams generally contribute little to furthering our understanding. This curious state of affairs seems to me to call for certain reflections."

"Why should I not expect from the sign of the dream more than I expect from a degree of consciousness which is daily more acute? Can’t the dream also be used in solving the fundamental questions of life? Are these questions the same in one case as in the other and, in the dream, do these questions already exist? Is the dream any less restrictive or punitive than the rest? I am growing old and, more than that reality to which I believe I subject myself, it is perhaps the dream, the difference with which I treat the dream, which makes me grow old."

"Let me come back again to the waking state. I have no choice but to consider it a phenomenon of interference. Not only does the mind display, in this state, a strange tendency to lose its bearings (as evidenced by the slips and mistakes the secrets of which are just beginning to be revealed to us), but, what is more, it does not appear that, when the mind is functioning normally, it really responds to anything but the suggestions which come to it from the depths of that dark night to which I commend it."

"The mind of the man who dreams is fully satisfied by what happens to him. The agonizing question of possibility is no longer pertinent. Kill, fly faster, love to your heart's content. And if you should die, are you not certain of re-awaking among the dead? Let yourself be carried along, events will not tolerate your interference. You are nameless. The ease of everything is priceless."

"What reason, I ask, a reason so much vaster than the other, makes dreams seem so natural and allows me to welcome unreservedly a welter of episodes so strange that they could confound me now as I write? And yet I can believe my eyes, my ears; this great day has arrived, this beast has spoken."

"Surrealist methods would, moreover, demand to be heard. Everything is valid when it comes to obtaining the desired suddenness from certain associations. The pieces of paper that Picasso and Braque (in this quotation Breton refers to the early collage art of the two Cubists, ed.) insert into their work have the same value as the introduction of a platitude into a literary analysis of the most rigorous sort. It is even permissible to entitle POEM what we get from the most random assemblage possible (observe, if you will, the syntax) of headlines and scraps of headlines cut out of the newspapers."

"A story is told according to which Saint-Pol-Roux, in times gone by, used to have a notice posted on the door of his manor house in Camaret, every evening before he went to sleep, which read: ‘THE POET IS WORKING’."

"In those days, a man at least as boring as I, Pierre Reverdy, was writing: 'The image is a pure creation of the mind. It cannot be born from a comparison but from a juxtaposition of two more or less distant realities. The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be – the greater its emotional power and poetic reality..' (in the 'Nord-Sud', March 1918). These words, however sibylline for the uninitiated, were extremely revealing, and I pondered them for a long time."

"Apollinaire asserted that Chirico's first paintings were done under the influence of kinesthetic disorders (migraines, colic, etc.)"

"In homage to Guillaume Apollinaire [famous French poet, art-critic, writer and defender of Cubism], who had just died and who, on several occasions, seemed to us to have followed a discipline of this kind, without however having sacrificed to it any mediocre literary means, Soupault and I baptized the new mode of pure expression which we had at our disposal and which we wished to pass on to our friends, by the name of SURREALISM. I believe that there is no point today in dwelling any further on this word and that the meaning we gave it initially has generally prevailed over its Apollinarian sense."

"Those who might dispute our right to employ the term SURREALISM in the very special sense that we understand it are being extremely dishonest, for there can be no doubt that this word had no currency before we came along. Therefore, I am defining it once and for all: SURREALISM, Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express – verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner–the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern."

"After you have settled yourself in a place as favorable as possible to the concentration of your mind upon itself, have writing materials brought to you. Put yourself in as passive, or receptive, a state of mind as you can. Forget about your genius, your talents, and the talents of everyone else. Keep reminding yourself that literature is one of the saddest roads that lead to everything. Write quickly, without any preconceived subject, fast enough so that you will not remember what you're writing and be tempted to reread what you have written. The first sentence will come spontaneously, so compelling is the truth that with every passing second there is a sentence unknown to our consciousness which is only crying out to be heard."

"Surrealism, such as I conceive of it, asserts our complete nonconformism clearly enough so that there can be no question of translating it, at the trial of the real world, as evidence for the defense. It could, on the contrary, only serve to justify the complete state of distraction which we hope to achieve here below. Kant's absentmindedness regarding women, Pasteur's absentmindedness about 'grapes', Curies absentmindedness with respect to vehicles, are in this regard profoundly symptomatic. This world is only very relatively in tune with thought, and incidents of this kind are only the most obvious episodes of a war in which I am proud to be participating. 'Ce monde nest que très relativement à la mesure de la pensée et les incidents de ce genre ne sont que les épisodes jusquici les plus marquants dune guerre dindépendence à laquelle je me fais gloire de participer'. Surrealism is the 'invisible ray' which will one day enable us to win out over our opponents. 'You are no longer trembling, carcass'. This summer the roses are blue; the wood is of glass. The earth, draped in its verdant cloak, makes as little impression upon me as a ghost. It is living and ceasing to live which are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere."

"L'amour est toujours devant vous. Aimez."

"L'œil existe à l'état sauvage."

"Les valeurs oniriques l'ont définitivement emporté sur les autres et je demande à ce qu'on tienne pour un crétin celui qui se refuserait encore, par exemple, à voir un cheval galoper sur une tomate. Une tomate est aussi un ballon d'enfant, le surréalisme, je le répète, ayant supprimé le mot comme."

"Oneiric values have definitely won out over the others, and I maintain that anyone who still refuses to see, for instance, a horse galloping on a tomato, must be an idiot. A tomato is also a child's balloon - Surrealism, again, having suppressed the word "like.""

"Surrealism is only trying to rejoin the most durable traditions of mankind. Among the primitive peoples art always goes beyond what is conventionally and arbitrarily called the 'real'. The natives of the Northwest Pacific coast, the Pueblos, New Guinea, New Ireland, the Marquesas, among others, have made 'objets' [in the Collections of Max Ernst, C. Levy-Strauss, Andre Breton, Pierre Matisse, Carlbach, Segredakis] which Surrealists particularly appreciate."

"I say that the eye is not open when it is limited to the passive role of a mirror – even if the water of that mirror offers some interesting peculiarities.. ..that eye impresses me as no less dead than the eye of a slaughtered steer if it has only the capacity to reflect – what if it reflects the object in one or in many aspects, in repose or in motion, in waking or in dream? The treasure of the eye is elsewhere! Most artists are still for tuning around the hands of the clock.. ..without having the slightest concern for the spring hidden in the opaque case. The eye-spring.. ..Arshile Gorky – for me the first painter to whom the secret have been completely revealed."

"Truly the eye was.. ..made to cast a lineament, a conducting wire between the most heterogeneous things. Such a wire, of maximum ductility, should allow us to understand, in a minimum of time, the relationship which connect, without possible discharge of continuity, innumerable physical and mental structures.. ..the key (of the mental prison, ed.) lies in a free unlimited pay of analogies.. ..one can admire today a canvas signed by Gorky, 'The liver is the Cock’s Comb', which should be considered the great open door to the analogy world."

"In short it is my concern to emphasize that Gorky is, of all the surrealist artists, the only one who maintains direct contact with nature – sit down to paint before her. Furthermore, it is out of the question that he would take the expression of this nature as an end in itself – rightly he demands of her that she provide sensations that can serve as springboards for both knowledge and pleasure in fathoming certain profound states of mind.. .Here for the first time nature is treated as a cryptogram. The artist has a code by reason of his own sensitive anterior impressions, and can decode nature to reveal the very rhythm of life, in the discovery of the very rhythm of life."

"Art today can only be revolutionary, that is, it must aspire at the complete and radical reconstruction of society, even if for no other reason than to emancipate intellectual creation from the chains which obstruct it and to allow all mankind to rise to the heights that only geniuses could reach in the past."

"As we liked to do as children, extracting from the soft forest floor the light chestnut trees only a few centimeters high at the base of which the chestnut continues to shine to the sun its clods of soil from the past, the chestnut conserving all of its presence and witnessing with its presence the power of green hands, of shadow, of airy white or pink pyramids of dances.. ..and of future chestnuts which, under new dust, would be discovered by the marveled sight of other children. It is in this perspective that the work of Arp, more than any other, should be situated. He found the most vital in himself in the secrets of this germinating life where the most minimal detail is of the greatest importance, where, on the other hand, the distinction between the elements becomes meaningless, adopting a peculiar under the rock humor permanently."

"Under his [ Marc Chagall ] sole impulse metaphor made its triumphal entry into modern painting."

"Divine Dali!"

"So, André Breton, if tonight I dream I am screwing you, tomorrow morning I will paint all of our best fucking positions with the greatest wealth of detail."

"We lived in New York between 1941 and 1945 in a great friendship, running museums and antiquarians together. I owe him a lot about the knowledge and appreciation of objects. I've never seen him [Breton] doing a mistake on exotic and unusual objects. When I say a mistake, I mean about its authenticity but also its quality. He [Breton] had a sense, almost of divination."

"I had always believed in Andre Breton's freedom, to write as one thinks, in the order and disorder in which one feels in thinks, to follow sensations and absurd correlations of events and images, to trust to the new realms they lead one into. "The cult of the marvelous." Also the cult of the unconscious leadership, the cult of mystery, the evasion of false logic. The cult of the unconscious as proclaimed by Rimbaud. It is not madness. It is an effort to transcend the rigidities and the patterns made by the rational mind."

"André Breton's poetry is a poetry of happiness. It ignores neither the anguish nor the maledictions that haunted the nightmares of Baudelaire and Rimbaud, but it goes beyond them and resolves them. Breton, like Rimbaud, is a "seer," but he does not allow himself to be hypnotized by the terrible visions of the Rimbaldian hell. Even in horror and despair, Breton knows how to discern the subterranean springs of joy. Despair? It "enchants" him! His own life? The most serious question! And yet, he knows how to attach no importance to it. For him, death is "pink," and all the mysterious aspects of existence are illuminated by his penetrating gaze-all contradictions, all mysteries. Supreme reward of that supreme science: Poetry."

"André Breton, initiator of the most extraordinary revolution (because it engages much more than art-indeed, our whole life) is, of today's French poets, the most authentic. Others—"prettier," more "pleasant," more traditional, and more cowardly, as it were-may be more popular. But who cares? The least literary of our Men of Letters will remain the richest of all. Supremely indifferent: "I am not on earth with all my heart." Supremely knowledgeable and vigilant: "I touch only the heart of things/I hold the thread." Within him, the exaltation of research, the dazzling discoveries, the smiling calm of one who knows, the assurance of one who sees. André Breton: richest and purest. Blocks of crystal piled high."

"There is a concealment that is of a different nature. It may take various forms; it always has to do, I think, with a special concern for the majority. I remember a meeting with André Breton after I had translated an introduction of his to a book of "primitive" paintings. We spoke of publishing. "I would never publish anywhere," he said, "unless I knew that there I and my followers constituted a majority." (This attitude, certainly, stands in direct relation to the forming of groups of the "intentionally obscure.")"

"Ô mes petites amoureuses, Que je vous hais !"

"J'allais sous le ciel, Muse! et j'étais ton féal."

"Mon auberge était à la Grande-Ourse. Mes étoiles au ciel avaient un doux frou-frou."

"Mon triste coeur bave à la poupe."

"A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu: voyelles, Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes !"

"Elle est retrouvée, Quoi ? — L'Éternité. C'est la mer allée Avec le soleil."

"O saisons, ô châteaux, Quelle âme est sans défauts ?"

"J'ai embrassé l'aube d'été."

"Il pleut doucement sur la ville."

"Plus léger qu'un bouchon j'ai dansé sur les flots."

"Plus douce qu'aux enfants la chair des pommes sures, L'eau verte pénétra ma coque de sapin."

"Je me suis baigné dans le Poème De la Mer... Dévorant les azurs verts."

"J'ai vu le soleil bas, taché d'horreurs mystiques, Illuminant de longs figements violets, Pareils à des acteurs de drames très-antiques."

"J'ai vu des archipels sidéraux! et des îles Dont les cieux délirants sont ouverts au vogueur: Est-ce en ces nuits sans fond que tu dors et t'exiles, Million d'oiseaux d'or, ô future Vigueur ?"

"Un soir, j'ai assis la Beauté sur mes genoux. - Et je l'ai trouvée amère. - Et je l'ai injuriée."

"Je parvins à faire s'évanouir dans mon esprit toute l'espérance humaine."

"La vie est la farce à mener par tous."

"Jadis, si je me souviens bien, ma vie était un festin où s'ouvraient tous les coeurs, où tous les vins coulaient."

"Je suis esclave de mon baptême."

"La vieillerie poétique avait une bonne part dans mon alchimie du verbe."

"L'amour est à réinventer, on le sait."

"Moi ! moi qui me suis dit mage ou ange, dispensé de toute morale, je suis rendu au sol."

"Il faut être absolument moderne."

"Je me crois en enfer, donc j'y suis."

"Je est un autre."

"Je dis qu'il faut être voyant, se faire voyant. Le poète se fait voyant par un long, immense et raisonné dérèglement de tous les sens."

"Anna Margolin was greatly influenced by Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Rimbaud; among the Germans, by Else Lasker-Schüler and Rainer Maria Rilke; and among the Yiddish poets, by Itsik Manger and Avrom Sutzkever."

"What Rimbaud did for language, and not merely for poetry, is only beginning to be understood. And this more by readers than by writers, I feel. At least, in our country. Nearly all the modern French poets have been influenced by him. Indeed, one might say that contemporary French poetry owes everything to Rimbaud. Thus far, however, none have gone beyond him — in daring or invention."

"This violence is a calm that disturbs you."

"But I would adore that thief who is my mother."

"If the hero join combat with night and conquer it, may shreds of it remain upon him!"

"I suffered at the time from an ugliness I no longer find on my childhood face."

"By remaining inaccessible, he became the epitome of those whom I have named and who stagger me. I was therefore chaste."

"Fierce and pure, I was the theater of a fairyland restored to life."

"To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance."

"Yet, what is their violence compared to mine, which was to accept theirs, to make it mine, to wish it for myself, to intercept it, to utilize it, to force it upon myself, to know it, to premeditate it, to discern and assume its perils? But what was mine, willed and necessary for my defense, my toughness, my rigor, compared to the violence they underwent like a malediction, risen from an inner fire simultaneously with an outer light which sets them ablaze and illuminates us?"

"But--criminals are remote from you--as in love, they turn away and turn me away from the world and its laws. Thiers smells of sweat, sperm, and blood. In short, to my body and my thristy soul it offers devotion. It was because their world contains these erotic conditions that I was bent on evil."

"With homosexuality added, it would be sparkling, unassimilable."

"Excluded by my birth and tastes from the social order, I was not aware of its diversity. I wondered at its perfect coherence, which rejected me."

"So long as we were in a room in a brothel, we belonged to our fantasies, but once having exposed them, we're now tied up with human beings, tied to you and forced to go on with this adventure according to the laws of visibility."

"The Day the Palestinians become institutionalized, I will no longer be on their side."

"There has been talk about (The Blacks) revival. Angelou comments: "It was a very important play. It still is an important play. It implies that, come the revolution, Blacks will be as bad and as greedy as Whites have been. What goes around comes around, which is a very Black statement, an African statement, too. "Working for me as a young woman, with the cast of The Blacks, was an incredible experience. The original cast included Cecily (sic) Tyson, James Earl Jones, Raymond St. Jacques, Roscoe Lee Browne, Lou Gossett, Charles Gordone, Helen Martin, Cynthia Belgrave, Jay Flash Riley, Lex Monson, Godfrey Cambridge, Ethel Ayler, and me. It was the thing to go into; if you were out of a job, go try out for The Blacks. It was wonderful to break down the play together. Obviously it fed all our artistic growth. "It would be interesting to see it today with some new people. All the [original] actors have done so many things since [that they] would bring so much other equipment to it now. Just like the time-instead of 1960-61, 1977 has its own rhythm and its own impetus."

"Il est dans la nature humaine de penser sagement et d'agir d'une façon absurde."

"Il est sage de ne mettre ni crainte, ni espérance dans l’avenir incertain."

"Le christianisme a beaucoup fait pour l’amour en en faisant un péché."

"La souffrance! quelle divine méconnu! Nous lui devons tout ce qu'il ya de bon en nous, tout ce qui donne du prix à la vie; nous lui devons la pitié, nous lui devons le courage, nous lui devons toutes les vertus."

"En art comme en amour, l'instinct suffit."

"S’il fallait absolument choisir, j’aimerais mieux faire une chose immorale qu’une chose cruelle."

"Cela consiste pour les pauvres à soutenir et à conserver les riches dans leur puissance et leur oisiveté. Ils y doivent travailler devant la majestueuse égalité des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain."

"Pour accomplir de grandes choses il ne suffit pas d'agir, il faut rêver; il ne suffit pas de calculer, il faut croire."

"II n'y a que les pauvres gens qui payent comptant. Ce n'est pas par vertu; c'est parce qu'on ne leur fait pas crédit."

"L'ignorance et l'erreur sont nécessaires à la vie comme le pain et l'eau."

"Ce sont les hommes qui n'aiment pas les femmes qui s'intéressent à la toilette des femmes. Et les hommes qui aiment les femmes ne voient pas seulement comment elles sont habillées."

"Dans tout État policé, la richesse est chose sacrée; dans les démocraties elle est la seule chose sacrée."

"L'innocence, le plus souvent, est un bonheur et non pas une vertu."

"Nous avons des remèdes pour faire parler les femmes; nous n'en avons pas pour les faire taire."

"Il ne savait rien, ne voulait rien savoir, en quoi il se conformait à son génie, dont il ne surchargeait point l’aimable petitesse, et son heureux instinct lui conseillait de comprendre peu plutôt que de comprendre mal."

"Un conte sans amour est comme du boudin sans moutarde; c’est chose insipide."

"Il est à peu près impossible de constituer systématiquement une morale naturelle. La nature n'a pas de principes. Elle ne nous fournit aucune raison de croire que la vie humaine est respectable. La nature, indifférente, ne fait nulle distinction du bien et du mal."

"De toutes les définitions de l'homme, la plus mauvaise me paraît celle qui en fait un animal raisonnable."

"On croit mourir pour la patrie; on meurt pour les industriels."

"Quand une chose a été dite et bien dite, n'ayez aucun scrupule, prenez-la, copiez."

"On devient bon écrivain comme on devient bon menuisier: en rabotant ses phrases."

"Si 50 millions de personnes disent une bêtise, c'est quand même une bêtise."

"A people under the menace of war and of invasion is very easy to govern. It does not claim social reforms, it does not cavil over armaments or military equipment. It pays without haggling, it ruins itself at it, and that is excellent for the syndicates, the financiers, and the heads of industry to whom patriotic terrors open an abundant source of gain."

"Je ne sais pas de lecture plus facile, plus attrayante, plus douce que celle d'un catalogue."

"Les livres d'histoire qui ne mentent pas sont tout fort maussades."

"Les amants qui aiment bien n'écrivent pas leur bonheur."

"Savoir n'est rien, imaginer est tout."

"Il se flattait d'être sans préjugés, et cette prétention était à elle seule un gros préjugé."

"Les hommes qui se sont occupés du bonheur des peuples ont rendu leurs proches bien malheureux."

"L'homme est ainsi fait qu'il ne se délasse d'un travail que par un autre."

"J'ai toujours préféré la folie des passions à la sagesse de l'indifférence."

"Les gens qui n'eurent point de faiblesses sont terribles; on n'a point de prise sur eux."

"L'art d'enseigner n'est que l'art d'éveiller la curiosité des jeunes âmes pour la satisfaire ensuite."

"Tous les changements, même les plus souhaités ont leur mélancolie, car ce que nous quittons, c'est une partie de nous-mêmes; il faut mourir à une vie pour entrer dans une autre."

"C'est d'actes et non d'idées que vivent les peuples."

"On reproche aux gens de parler d’eux-mêmes. C’est pourtant le sujet qu’ils traitent le mieux."

"Les plus beaux mots du monde ne sont que de vains sons, si on ne les comprend pas."

"Il est bon que le cœur soit naïf et que l’esprit ne le soit pas."

"Le bon critique est celui qui raconte les aventures de son âme au milieu des chefs-d'œuvre."

"L'ironie, c'est la gaieté de la réflexion et la joie de la sagesse."

"And to me it seems that you have fallen asleep upon a white rock, and in a parish of dreams, and have dreamt all this in a moment while it was night."

"The gods conform scrupulously to the sentiments of their worshippers: they have reasons for so doing. Pay attention to this. The spirit which favoured the accession in Rome of the god of Israel was not merely the spirit of the masses, but also that of the philosophers. At that time, they were nearly all Stoics, and believed in one god alone, one on whose behalf Plato had laboured and one unconnected by tie of family or friendship with the gods of human form of Greece and Rome. This god, through his infinity, resembled the god of the Jews. Seneca and Epictetus, who venerated him, would have been the first to have been surprised at the resemblance, had they been called upon to institute a comparison. Nevertheless, they had themselves greatly contributed towards rendering acceptable the austere monotheism of the Judaeo-Christians. Doubtless a wide gulf separated Stoic haughtiness from Christian humility, but Seneca's morals, consequent upon his sadness and his contempt of nature, were paving the way for the Evangelical morals. The Stoics had joined issue with life and the beautiful; this rupture, attributed to Christianity, was initiated by the philosophers. A couple of centuries later, in the time of Constantine, both pagans and Christians will have, so to speak, the same morals and philosophy. The Emperor Julian, who restored to the Empire its old religion, which had been abolished by Constantine the Apostate, is justly regarded as an opponent of the Galilean. And, when perusing the petty treatises of Julian, one is struck with the number of ideas this enemy of the Christians held in common with them. He, like them, is a monotheist; with them, he believes in the merits of abstinence, fasting, and mortification of the flesh; with them, he despises carnal pleasures, and considers he will rise in favour with the gods by avoiding women; finally, he pushes Christian sentiment to the degree of rejoicing over his dirty beard and his black finger-nails. The Emperor Julian's morals were almost those of St. Gregory Nazianzen. There is nothing in this but what is natural and usual. The transformations undergone by morals and ideas are never sudden. The greatest changes in social life are wrought imperceptibly, and are only seen from afar. Christianity did not secure a foothold until such time as the condition of morals accommodated itself to it, and as Christianity itself had become adjusted to the condition of morals. It was unable to substitute itself for paganism until such time as paganism came to resemble it, and itself came to resemble paganism."

"The great human asset is man himself. In order to rate the terrestrial globe, it is necessary to begin by rating men. To exploit the soil, the mines, the waters, all the substances and all the forces of our planet, it needs man, the whole of man; humanity, the whole of humanity. The complete exploitation of the terrestrial globe demands the united labour of white, yellow, and black men. By reducing, diminishing, and weakening, or, to sum it up in one word, by colonising a portion of humanity, we are working against ourselves. It is to our advantage that yellow and black men should be powerful, free, and wealthy. Our prosperity and our wealth depend on theirs. The more is produced, the more will there be consumed. The greater the profit they derive from us, the greater the profit we shall derive from them. If they reap the benefit of our labours, so shall we fully reap theirs. If we study the movements which govern the destinies of societies, we may perhaps discover signs that the era of violent deeds is coming to an end. War, which was formerly a standing institution among nations, is now intermittent, and the periods of peace have become of longer duration than those of war."

"You seem to have dreamt on the white stone, in the midst of the people of dreams, since you dreamt so long a dream in the course of so short a night."

"It is not likely," remarked Joséphin Leclerc, "that the future will be such as you have seen it. I do not wish for the coming of socialism, but I dread it not. Collectivism at the helm would be quite another thing than is imagined. Who was it who said, carrying back his thoughts to the time of Constantine and of the Church's early triumphs : 'Christianity is triumphant, but its triumph is subject to the conditions imposed by life on all political and religious parties. All of them, whatever they may be, undergo so complete a transformation in the struggle that after victory there remains of themselves but the name and a few symbols of the last idea'?"

"Upon the whole, humanity changes little. What has been shall be." "No doubt," replied'Jean Boilly, " man, or that which we call man, changes little. We belong to a definite species. The evolution of the species is of necessity included in the definition of the species. It is impossible to conceive humanity subsequent to its transformation. A transformed species is a lost species. But what reason is there for us to believe that man is the end of the evolution of life upon the earth? Why suppose that his birth has exhausted the creative forces of nature, and that the universal mother of the flora and fauna should, after having shaped him, become for ever barren. A natural philosopher, who does not stand in fear of his own ideas, H. G. Wells, has said : 'Man is not final.' No indeed, man is neither the beginning nor the end of terrestrial life. Long before him, all over the globe, animated forces were multiplying in the depths of the sea, in the mud of the strand, in the forests, lakes, prairies, and tree-topped mountains. After him, new forms will go on taking shape. A future race, born perhaps of our own, but having perchance no bond of origin with us, will succeed us in the empire of the planet. These new spirits of the earth will ignore or despise us. The monuments of our arts, should they discover vestiges of them, will have no meaning for them. Rulers of the future, whose mind we can no more divine than the palaeopithekos of the Siwalik Mountains was able to forecast the trains of thought of Aristotle, Newton, and Poincaré."

"Mael, a scion of a royal family of Cambria, was sent in his ninth year to the Abbey of Yvern so that he might there study both sacred and profane learning. At the age of fourteen he renounced his patrimony and took a vow to serve the Lord. His time was divided, according to the rule, between the singing of hymns, the study of grammar, and the meditation of eternal truths."

"A beautiful fig-tree raised itself in a hollow of the island and thrust forth its branches far and wide. The inhabitants of the island used to worship it. And the holy Mael said to them: "You worship this tree because it is beautiful. Therefore you are capable of feeling beauty. Now I come to reveal to you the hidden beauty." And he taught them the Gospel. And after having instructed them, he baptized them with salt and water."

"Thinking that what he saw were men living under the natural law, and that the Lord had sent him to teach them the Divine law, he preached the gospel to them. Mounted on a lofty stone in the midst of the wild circus: "Inhabitants of this island," said he, "although you be of small stature, you look less like a band of fishermen and mariners than like the senate of a judicious republic. By your gravity, your silence, your tranquil deportment, you form on this wild rock an assembly comparable to the Conscript Fathers at Rome deliberating in the temple of Victory, or rather, to the philosophers of Athens disputing on the benches of the Areopagus. Doubtless you possess neither their science nor their genius, but perhaps in the sight of God you are their superiors. I believe that you are simple and good. As I went round your island I saw no image of murder, no sign of carnage, no enemies' heads or scalps hung from a lofty pole or nailed to the doors of your villages. You appear to me to have no arts and not to work in metals. But your hearts are pure and your hands are innocent, and the truth will easily enter into your souls." Now what he had taken for men of small stature but of grave bearing were penguins whom the spring had gathered together, and who were ranged in couples on the natural steps of the rock, erect in the majesty of their large white bellies. From moment to moment they moved their winglets like arms, and uttered peaceful cries. They did not fear men, for they did not know them, and had never received any harm from them; and there was in the monk a certain gentleness that reassured the most timid animals and that pleased these penguins extremely."

"Touched by their attention, the holy man taught them the Gospel. "Inhabitants of this island, the earthly day that has just risen over your rocks is the image of the heavenly day that rises in your souls. For I bring you the inner light; I bring you the light and heat of the soul. Just as the sun melts the ice of your mountains so Jesus Christ will melt the ice of your hearts." Thus the old man spoke. As everywhere throughout nature voice calls to voice, as all which breathes in the light of day loves alternate strains, these penguins answered the old man by the sounds of their throats. And their voices were soft, for it was the season of their loves."

"The holy man, persuaded that they belonged to some idolatrous people and that in their own language they gave adherence to the Christian faith, invited them to receive baptism. "I think," said he to them, "that you bathe often, for all the hollows of the rocks are full of pure water, and as I came to your assembly I saw several of you plunging into these natural baths. Now purity of body is the image of spiritual purity." And he taught them the origin, the nature, and the effects of baptism. "Baptism," said he to them, "is Adoption, New Birth, Regeneration, Illumination." And he explained each of these points to them in succession. Then, having previously blessed the water that fell from the cascades and recited the exorcisms, he baptized those whom he had just taught, pouring on each of their heads a drop of pure water and pronouncing the sacred words. And thus for three days and three nights he baptized the birds."

"When the baptism of the penguins was known in Paradise, it caused neither joy nor sorrow, but an extreme surprise. The Lord himself was embarrassed. He gathered an assembly of clerics and doctors, and asked them whether they regarded the baptism as valid."

"Jealousy is a virtue of democracies which preserves them from tyrants."

"For the moment the peril was nowhere and yet everywhere. The majority remained solid; but the leaders became stiff and exacting."

"A pretext presented itself; some insult needed to be avenged, or some debt to be collected. Six battleships, fourteen cruisers, and eighteen transports sailed up the mouth of the river Hippopotamus. Six hundred canoes vainly opposed the landing of the troops. Admiral Vivier des Murenes' cannons produced an appalling effect upon the blacks, who replied to them with flights of arrows, but in spite of their fanatical courage they were entirely defeated. Popular enthusiasm was kindled by the newspapers which the financiers subsidised, and burst into a blaze. Some Socialists alone protested against this barbarous, doubtful, and dangerous enterprise. They were at once arrested."

"It was high time for a generous benefactor to come to the relief of our necessities. Rich and poor, learned and ignorant are turning away from us. And when we try to lead back these misguided souls, neither threats nor promises, neither gentleness nor violence, nor anything else is now successful. The Penguin clergy pine in desolation; our country priests, reduced to following the humblest of trades, are shoeless, and compelled to live upon such scraps as they can pick up. In our ruined churches the rain of heaven falls upon the faithful, and during the holy offices they can hear the noise of stones falling from the arches. The tower of the cathedral is tottering and will soon fall. St. Orberosia is forgotten by the Penguins, her devotion abandoned, and her sanctuary deserted. On her shrine, bereft of its gold and precious stones, the spider silently weaves her web."

"Penguinia gloried in its wealth. Those who produced the things necessary for life, wanted them; those who did not produce them had more than enough. "But these," as a member of the Institute said, "are necessary economic fatalities." The great Penguin people had no longer either traditions, intellectual culture, or arts. The progress of civilisation manifested itself among them by murderous industry, infamous speculation, and hideous luxury. Its capital assumed, as did all the great cities of the time, a cosmopolitan and financial character. An immense and regular ugliness reigned within it. The country enjoyed perfect tranquillity. It had reached its zenith."

"Drink! The flies have not spoilt my vintage; the vines were dry before they came."

"For the majority of people, though they do not know what to do with this life, long for another that shall have no end."

"Zita told him of the black standards assembled in crowds in all the waste places of the globe; of the deliverance premeditated and prepared in the provinces of Heaven, where the first revolt had long ago been fomented. "Prince," she went on, "your army awaits you. Come, lead it on to victory.""Friends," replied the great archangel, "I was aware of the object of your visit. Baskets of fruit and honeycombs await you under the shade of this mighty tree. The sun is about to descend into the roseate waters of the Sacred River. When you have eaten, you will slumber pleasantly in this garden, where the joys of the intellect and of the senses have reigned since the day when I drove hence the spirit of the old Demiurge. To-morrow I will give you my answer.""

"Night hung its blue over the garden. Satan fell asleep. He had a dream, and in that dream, soaring over the earth, he saw it covered with angels in revolt, beautiful as gods whose eyes darted lightning. And from pole to pole one single cry, formed of a myriad cries, mounted towards him, filled with hope and love. And Satan said: "Let us go forth! Let us seek the ancient adversary in his high abode." And he led the countless host of angels over the celestial plains. And Satan was cognizant of what took place in the heavenly citadel. When news of this second revolt came thither, the Father said to the Son: "The irreconcilable foe is rising once again. Let us take heed to ourselves, and in this, our time of danger, look to our defences, lest we lose our high abode." And the Son, consubstantial with the Father, replied: "We shall triumph under the sign that gave Constantine the victory.""

"The archangel Michael took supreme command. He reassured their minds by his serenity. His countenance, wherein his soul was visible, expressed contempt for danger. By his orders, the chiefs of the thunderbolts, the Kerûbs, grown dull with the long interval of peace, paced with heavy steps the ramparts of the Holy Mountain, and, letting the gaze of their bovine eyes wander over the glittering clouds of their Lord, strove to place the divine batteries in position. After inspecting the defences, they swore to the Most High that all was in readiness. They took counsel together as to the plan they should follow. Michael was for the offensive. He, as a consummate soldier, said it was the supreme law. Attack, or be attacked, — there was no middle course. "Moreover," he added, "the offensive attitude is particularly suitable to the ardour of the Thrones and Dominations." Beyond that, it was impossible to obtain a word from the valiant chief, and this silence seemed the mark of a genius sure of himself."

"Mutterings and murmurs, mingling with the rumours of glory, gave rise to fears of an indecisive battle, a precipitate retreat. Insolent voices gave out that a spirit of the lowest category, a guardian angel, the insignificant Arcade, had checked and routed the dazzling host of the three great archangels."

"With impassive gaze, Michael, prince of warriors, measured the extent of the disaster, and his keen intelligence penetrated its causes. The armies of the living God had taken the offensive, but by one of those fatalities in war which disconcert the plans of the greatest captains, the enemy had also taken the offensive, and the effect was evident."

"The garrison laid down their arms before Satan. Michael placed his flaming sword at the feet of the conquering archangel. "Take back your sword, Michael," said Satan. "It is Lucifer who yields it to you. Bear it in defence of peace and law." Then letting his gaze fall on the leaders of the celestial cohorts, he cried in a ringing voice: "Archangel Michael, and you, Powers, Thrones, and Dominations, swear all of you to be faithful to your God." "We swear it," they replied with one voice. And Satan said: "Powers, Thrones, and Dominations, of all past wars, I wish but to remember the invincible courage that you displayed and the loyalty which you rendered to authority, for these assure me of the steadfastness of the fealty you have just sworn to me.""

"The following day, on the ethereal plain, Satan commanded the black standards to be distributed to the troops, and the winged soldiers covered them with kisses and bedewed them with tears. And Satan had himself crowned God. Thronging round the glittering walls of Heavenly Jerusalem, apostles, pontiffs, virgins, martyrs, confessors, the whole company of the elect, who during the fierce battle had enjoyed delightful tranquillity, tasted infinite joy in the spectacle of the coronation. The elect saw with ravishment the Most High precipitated into Hell, and Satan seated on the throne of the Lord. In conformity with the will of God which had cut them off from sorrow they sang in the ancient fashion the praises of their new Master."

"Satan, piercing space with his keen glance, contemplated the little globe of earth and water where of old he had planted the vine and formed the first tragic chorus. And he fixed his gaze on that Rome where the fallen God had founded his empire on fraud and lie. Nevertheless, at that moment a saint ruled over the Church. Satan saw him praying and weeping. And he said to him: "To thee I entrust my Spouse. Watch over her faithfully. In thee I confirm the right and power to decide matters of doctrine, to regulate the use of the sacraments, to make laws and to uphold purity of morals. And the faithful shall be under obligation to conform thereto. My Church is eternal, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Thou art infallible. Nothing is changed." And the successor of the apostles felt flooded with rapture. He prostrated himself, and with his forehead touching the floor, replied: "O Lord, my God, I recognise Thy voice! Thy breath has been wafted like balm to my heart. Blessed be Thy name. Thy will be done on Earth, as it is in Heaven. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.""

"Satan found pleasure in praise and in the exercise of his grace; he loved to hear his wisdom and his power belauded. He listened with joy to the canticles of the cherubim who celebrated his good deeds, and he took no pleasure in listening to Nectaire's flute, because it celebrated nature's self, yielded to the insect and to the blade of grass their share of power and love, and counselled happiness and freedom. Satan, whose flesh had crept, in days gone by, at the idea that suffering prevailed in the world, now felt himself inaccessible to pity. He regarded suffering and death as the happy results of omnipotence and sovereign kindness. And the savour of the blood of victims rose upward towards him like sweet incense. He fell to condemning intelligence and to hating curiosity. He himself refused to learn anything more, for fear that in acquiring fresh knowledge he might let it be seen that he had not known everything at the very outset. He took pleasure in mystery, and believing that he would seem less great by being understood, he affected to be unintelligible. Dense fumes of Theology filled his brain. One day, following the example of his predecessor, he conceived the notion of proclaiming himself one god in three persons. Seeing Arcade smile as this proclamation was made, he drove him from his presence. Istar and Zita had long since returned to earth. Thus centuries passed like seconds. Now, one day, from the altitude of his throne, he plunged his gaze into the depths of the pit and saw Ialdabaoth in the Gehenna where he himself had long lain enchained. Amid the ever lasting gloom Ialdabaoth still retained his lofty mien. Blackened and shattered, terrible and sublime, he glanced upwards at the palace of the King of Heaven with a look of proud disdain, then turned away his head. And the new god, as he looked upon his foe, beheld the light of intelligence and love pass across his sorrow-stricken countenance. And lo! Ialdabaoth was now contemplating the Earth and, seeing it sunk in wickedness and suffering, he began to foster thoughts of kindliness in his heart. On a sudden he rose up, and beating the ether with his mighty arms, as though with oars, he hastened thither to instruct and to console mankind. Already his vast shadow shed upon the unhappy planet a shade soft as a night of love. And Satan awoke bathed in an icy sweat. Nectaire, Istar, Arcade, and Zita were standing round him. The finches were singing. "Comrades," said the great archangel, "no — we will not conquer the heavens. Enough to have the power. War engenders war, and victory defeat. "God, conquered, will become Satan; Satan, conquering, will become God. May the fates spare me this terrible lot; I love the Hell which formed my genius. I love the Earth where I have done some good, if it be possible to do any good in this fearful world where beings live but by rapine. Now, thanks to us, the god of old is dispossessed of his terrestrial empire, and every thinking being on this globe disdains him or knows him not. But what matter that men should be no longer submissive to Ialdabaoth if the spirit of Ialdabaoth is still in them; if they, like him, are jealous, violent, quarrelsome, and greedy, and the foes of the arts and of beauty? What matter that they have rejected the ferocious Demiurge, if they do not hearken to the friendly demons who teach all truths; to Dionysus, Apollo, and the Muses? As to ourselves, celestial spirits, sublime demons, we have destroyed Ialdabaoth, our Tyrant, if in ourselves we have destroyed Ignorance and Fear." And Satan, turning to the gardener, said: "Nectaire, you fought with me before the birth of the world. We were conquered because we failed to understand that Victory is a Spirit, and that it is in ourselves and in ourselves alone that we must attack and destroy Ialdabaoth.""

"Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when He did not want to sign."

"Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one."

"It was one of the deadliest and heaviest feelings of my life to feel that I was no longer a boy. From that moment I began to grow old in my own esteem — and in my esteem age is not estimable."

"No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free, none ever will."

"Of all the sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest."

"Silence is the wit of fools, and one of the virtues of the wise."

"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool."

"Can any thing in this world be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth can come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster!"

"You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; in just the same way, you learn to love by loving."

"An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't. It's knowing where to go to find out what you need to know, and it's knowing how to use the information once you get it."

"Life is too short, and Proust is too long."

"If by Realism we mean Truth, which alone gives value to any study of human nature, we have in Anatole France a very dainty realist: — if by Romanticism we understand that unconscious tendency of the artist to elevate truth itself beyond the range of the familiar, and into the emotional realm of aspiration, then Anatole France is at times a romantic. And, nevertheless, as a literary figure he stands alone; neither by his distinctly Parisian refinement of method, nor yet by any definite characteristic of style, can he be successfully attached to any special group of writers."

"When Anatole France died, twenty years ago, his reputation suffered one of those sudden slumps to which highbrow writers who have lived long enough to become popular are especially liable. In France, according to the charming French custom, vicious personal attacks were made upon him while he lay dying and when he was freshly dead. A particularly venomous one was written by Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, afterwards to become a collaborator of the Nazis. In England, also, it was discovered that Anatole France was no good. A few years later than this a young man attached to a weekly paper (I met him afterwards in Paris and found that he could not buy a tram ticket without assistance) solemnly assured me that Anatole France ‘wrote very bad French’. France was, it seemed, a vulgar, spurious and derivative writer whom everyone could now ‘see through’. Round about the same time, similar discoveries were being made about Bernard Shaw and Lytton Strachey: but curiously enough all three writers have remained very readable, while most of their detractors are forgotten. How far the revulsion against Anatole France was genuinely literary I do not know. Certainly he had been overpraised, and one must at times get tired of a writer so mannered and so indefatigably pornographic. But it is unquestionable that he was attacked partly from political motives. He may or may not have been a great writer, but he was one of the symbolic figures in the politico-literary dogfight which has been raging for a hundred years or more. The clericals and reactionaries hated him in just the same way as they hated Zola. Anatole France had championed Dreyfus, which needed considerable courage, he had debunked Joan of Arc, he had written a comic history of France; above all, he had lost no opportunity of poking fun at the Church. He was everything that the clericals and revanchistes, the people who first preached that the Boche must never be allowed to recover and afterwards sucked the blacking off Hitler’s boots, most detested. … He was willing to work for Socialism, even to deliver lectures on it in draughty halls, and he knew that it was both necessary and inevitable, but it is doubtful whether he subjectively wanted it. The world, he once said, would get about as much relief from the coming of Socialism as a sick man gets from turning over in bed. In a crisis he was ready to identify himself with the working class, but the thought of a Utopian future depressed him, as can be seen from his book, La Pierre Blanche. … Temperamentally he was not a Socialist but a Radical. At this date that is probably the rarer animal of the two, and it is his Radicalism, his passion for liberty and intellectual honesty, that give their special colour to the four novels about Monsieur Bergeret."

"Tant de fiel entre-t-il dans l'âme des dévots ?"

"Pour soutenir tes droits, que le ciel autorise, Abime tout plutôt ; c'est l'esprit de l'Église."

"Let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace."

"Le chagrin monte en croupe et galope avec lui."

"Le temps fuit, et nous traîne avec soi : Le moment où je parle est déjà loin de moi."

"Tenez, voilà, dit-elle, à chacun une écaille. Des sottises d'autrui nous vivons au palais : Messieurs, l'huître était bonne. Adieu. Vivez en paix."

"Rien n'est beau que le vrai : le vrai seul est aimable."

"Le pénible fardeau de n'avoir rien à faire."

"Tout ce qu'on dit de trop est fade et rebutant."

"Souvent la peur d'un mal nous conduit dans un pire."

"Heureux qui, dans ses vers, sait d'une voix légère Passer du grave au doux, du plaisant au sévère."

"Ce que l'on conçoit bien s'énonce clairement, Et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisément."

"Hâtez-vous lentement ; et, sans perdre courage, Vingt fois sur le métier remettez votre ouvrage."

"La vérité n'a point cet air impétueux."

"Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l'admire."

"Le vrai peut quelquefois n'être pas vraisemblable."

"Chaque âge a ses plaisirs, son esprit et ses mœurs."

"Un fat quelquefois ouvre un avis important."

"Je ne puis rien nommer si ce n'est par son nom ; J'appelle un chat un chat, et Rollet un fripon."

"Il plait a tout le monde et ne saurait se plaire."

"N'en déplaise à ces fous nommés sages de Grèce, En ce monde il n'est point de parfaite sagesse : Tous les hommes sont fous, et, malgré tous leurs soins, Ne diffèrent entre eux que du plus ou du moins."

"Le plus sage est celui qui ne pense point l'être."

"Le plus fou souvent est le plus satisfait."

"La vertu, d'un cœur noble est la marque certaine."

"Si vous êtes sorti de ces héros fameux, Montrez-nous cette ardeur qu'on vit briller en eux."

"De tous les animaux qui s'élèvent dans l'air, Qui marchent sur la terre, ou nagent dans la mer, De Paris au Pérou, du Japon jusqu'à Rome, Le plus sot animal, à mon avis, c'est l'homme."

"L'or même à la laideur donne un teint de beauté : Mais tout devient affreux avec la pauvreté."

"La satire, en leçons, en nouveautés fertile, Sait seule assaisonner le plaisant et l'utile, Et, d'un vers qu'elle épure aux rayons du bons sens, Détromper les esprits des erreurs de leur temps."

"L'honneur est comme une ile escarpée et sans bords ; On n'y peut plus rentrer dès qu'on en est dehors."

"Et le Mien et le Tien, deux frères pointilleux, Par son ordre amenant les procès et la guerre, En tous lieux de ce pas vont partager la terre ; En tous lieux, sous les noms de bon droit et de tort, Vont chez elle établir le seul droit du plus fort."

"Tirer les marrons du feu avec la patte du chat."

"On ne meurt qu'une fois; et c'est pour si longtemps!"

"Je fais toujours bien le premier vers: mais j'ai peine à faire les autres."

"Le monde, chère Agnès, est une étrange chose."

"Une femme d'esprit est un diable en intrigue."

"Il y a fagots et fagots."

"Nous avons changé tout cela."

"J’enrage de bon cœur d’avoir tort, lorsque j’ai raison."

"Ah que je— Vous l'avez voulu, vous l'avez voulu, George Dandin, vous l'avez voulu, cela vous sied fort bien, et vous voilà ajusté comme il faut, vous avez justement ce que vous méritez."

"Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère?"

"Ah! Il n'y a plus d'enfants!"

"Presque tous les hommes meurent de leurs remèdes, et non pas de leurs maladies."

"Quare Opium facit dormire: … Quia est in eo Virtus dormitiva."

"Si l’emploi de la comédie est de corriger les vices des hommes, je ne vois pas par quelle raison il y en aura de privilégiés. Celui-ci est, dans l’État, d’une conséquence bien plus dangereuse que tous les autres ; et nous avons vu que le théâtre a une grande vertu pour la correction. Les plus beaux traits d’une sérieuse morale sont moins puissants, le plus souvent, que ceux de la satire ; et rien ne reprend mieux la plupart des hommes que la peinture de leurs défauts. C’est une grande atteinte aux vices que de les exposer à la risée de tout le monde. On souffre aisément des répréhensions ; mais on ne souffre point la raillerie. On veut bien être méchant, mais on ne veut point être ridicule."

"Vous êtes un sot en trois lettres, mon fils."

"Contre la médisance il n'est point de rempart."

"Ceux de qui la conduite offre le plus à rire Sont toujours sur autrui les premiers à médire."

"À votre nez, mon frère, elle se rit de vous."

"Une femme a toujours une vengeance prête."

"Couvrez ce sein que je ne saurais voir. Par de pareils objets les âmes sont blessées."

"Pour être dévot, je n'en suis pas moins homme."

"Le scandale du monde est ce qui fait l'offense, Et ce n'est pas pécher que pécher en silence."

"Je l'ai vu, dis-je, de mes propres yeux vu."

"Sur quelque préférence une estime se fonde, Et c'est n'estimer rien qu'estimer tout le monde."

"Et c’est une folie, à nulle autre, seconde, De vouloir se mêler de corriger le monde."

"C'est un parleur étrange, et qui trouve toujours L'art de ne vous rien dire avec de grands discours."

"Que de son cuisinier il s'est fait un mérite, Et que c'est à sa table à qui l'on rend visite."

"On voit qu'il se travaille à dire de bons mots."

"Plus on aime quelqu'un, moins il faut qu'on le flatte: À rien pardonner le pur amour éclate."

"Les doutes sont fâcheux plus que toute autre chose."

"On peut être honnête homme et faire mal des vers."

"Si de probité tout était revêtu, Si tous les cœurs était francs, justes et dociles, La plupart des vertus nous seraient inutiles, Puisqu'on en met l'usage à pouvoir sans ennui Supporter dans nos droits l'injustice d'autrui."

"C'est un merveilleux assaisonnement aux plaisirs qu'on goûte que la présence des gens qu'on aime."

"J'aime mieux un vice commode, Qu'une fatigante vertu."

"Le véritable Amphitryon, Est l'Amphitryon où l'on dine."

"Le Seigneur Jupiter sait dorer la pilule."

"[J]e veux que tu me dises à qui lu parles quand lu dis cela. Je parle... je parle à mon bonnet."

"Les beaux yeux de ma cassette."

"Vous parlez devant un homme à qui tout Naples est connu."

"Tout ce qui n'est point prose, est vers; et tout ce qui n'est point vers, est prose."

"Par ma foi, il y a plus de quarante ans que je dis de la prose, sans que j'en susse rien."

"Ah, la belle chose que de savoir quelque chose."

"Jurons, ma belle, Une ardeur éternelle."

"Je le soutiendrai devant tout le monde."

"La grammaire qui sait régenter jusqu'aux rois."

"Il est de sel attique assaisonné partout."

"Un sot savant est sot plus qu'un sot ignorant."

"Il faut manger pour vivre, et non pas vivre pour manger."

"But Comedy justly treated, as you find it in Molière, whom we so clownishly mishandled, the Comedy of Molière throws no infamous reflection upon life. It is deeply conceived, in the first place, and therefore it cannot be impure. Meditate on that statement. Never did man wield so shrieking a scourge upon vice, but his consummate self-mastery is not shaken while administering it. Tartuffe and Harpagon, in fact, are made each to whip himself and his class, the false pietists, and the insanely covetous. Molière has only set them in motion. He strips Folly to the skin, displays the imposture of the creature, and is content to offer her better clothing, with the lesson Chrysale reads to Philaminte and Bélise. He conceives purely, and he writes purely, in the simplest language, the simplest of French verse. The source of his wit is clear reason: it is a fountain of that soil; and it springs to vindicate reason, common-sense, rightness and justice; for no vain purpose ever. The wit is of such pervading spirit that it inspires a pun with meaning and interest. His moral does not hang like a tail, or preach from one character incessantly cocking an eye at the audience, as in recent realistic French Plays; but is in the heart of his work, throbbing with every pulsation of an organic structure. If Life is likened to the comedy of Molière, there is no scandal in the comparison."

"There will be things that I do that no one will be left to understand."

"The faith that I love the best, says God, is hope."

"In my servant the ant, my tiny servant, who hoards greedily like a miser. Who works like one unhappy and who has no break and who has no rest."

"I am so resplendent in my creation. That in order really not to see me these poor people would have to be blind."

"Faith is a loyal Wife. Charity is a Mother. An ardent mother, noble-hearted. Or an older sister who is like a mother. Hope is a little girl, nothing at all."

"He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers."

"Tyranny is always better organised than freedom."

"The sinner is at the heart of Christianity. No one is as competent as the sinner in matters of Christianity. No one, except a saint."

"The life of the honest man must be an apostasy and a perpetual desertion. The honest man must be a perpetual renegade, the life of an honest man must be a perpetual infidelity. For the man who wishes to remain faithful to truth must make himself continually unfaithful to all the continual, successive, indefatigable renascent errors. And the man who wishes to remain faithful to justice must make himself continually unfaithful to inexhaustibly triumphant injustices."

"Dans ce bel honneur de métier convergeaient tous le plus beaux, tous le plus nobles sentiments. Une dignité. Une fierté. Ne jamais rien demander à personne, disaient-ils. … Un ouvrier de ce temps-là ne savait pas ce que c’est que quémander. C’est la bourgeoisie qui quémande. C’est la bourgeoisie qui, les faisant bourgeois, leur a appris a quémander."

"These bygone workmen did not serve, they worked. They had an absolute honor, which is honor proper. A chair rung had to be well made. That was an understood thing. That was the first thing. It wasn’t that the chair rung had to be well made for the salary or on account of the salary. It wasn’t that it was well made for the boss, nor for connoisseurs, nor for the boss’ clients. It had to be well made itself, in itself, for itself, in its very self. A tradition coming, springing from deep within the race, a history, an absolute, an honor, demanded that this chair rung be well made. Every part of the chair which could not be seen was just as perfectly made as the parts which could be seen. This was the selfsame principle of cathedrals. … There was no question of being seen or of not being seen. It was the innate being of work which needed to be well done."

"Towards this fine honor of a trade converged all the finest, all the most noble sentiments—dignity, pride. Never ask anything of anyone, they used to say. … In those days a workman did not know what it was to solicit. It is the bourgeoisie who, turning the workmen into bourgeois, have taught them to solicit."

"Science is for those who learn; poetry, for those who know."

"A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool."

"Experience comprises illusions lost, rather than wisdom gained."

"The folly which we might have ourselves committed is the one which we are least ready to pardon in another."

"It is a very rare thing for a man of talent to succeed by his talent."

"Like those statues which must be made larger than "nature" in order that, viewed from below, or from a distance, they may appear to be of the "natural" size, certain truths must be "strained" in order that the public may form a just idea of them."

"Say nothing good of yourself, you will be distrusted; say nothing bad of yourself, you will be taken at your word."

"The happiness which is lacking makes one think even the happiness one has unbearable."

"We call that person who has lost his father, an orphan; and a widower that man who has lost his wife. But that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing a friend, by what name do we call him? Here every language is silent and holds its peace in impotence."

"There is a literature that does not reach the voracious mass. It is the work of creators.. .Every page must explode, either by profound heavy seriousness, the whirlwind, poetic frenzy, the new, the eternal, the crushing joke, enthusiasm for principles, or by the way in which it is printed. On the one hand a tottering world in flight, betrothed to the glockenspiel of hell, on the other hand: new men. Rough, bouncing, riding on hiccups. Behind them a crippled world and literary quacks with a mania for improvement."

"Dada is the signboard of abstraction; advertising and business are also elements of poetry.. .I destroy the drawers of the brain and of social organization: spread demoralization wherever I go and cast my hand from heaven to hell, my eyes from hell to heaven, restore the fecund wheel of a universal circus to objective forces and the imagination of every individual."

"Some people think they can explain rationally, by thought, what they think. But that is extremely relative... There is no ultimate Truth. The dialectic is an amusing mechanism which guides us / in a banal kind of way / to the opinions we had in the first place. Does anyone think that, by a minute refinement of logic, he has demonstrated the truth and established the correctness of these opinions? Logic imprisoned by the senses is an organic disease"

"Experience is also a product of chance and individual faculties... I detest greasy objectivity, and harmony, the science that finds everything in order. Carry on, my children, humanity... Science says we are the servants of nature: everything is in order, make love and bash your brains in. Carry on, my children, humanity, kind bourgeois and journalist virgins... I am against systems, the most acceptable system is on principle to have none."

"Dada; knowledge of all the means rejected up until now.. . Dada; abolition of logic, which is the dance of those impotent to create: Dada; of every social hierarchy and equation set up for the sake of values by our valets: Dada; every object, all objects, sentiments, obscurities, apparitions and the precise clash of parallel lines are weapons for the fight: Dada; abolition of memory: Dada; abolition of archaeology: Dada; abolition of prophets: Dada; abolition of the future: Dada; absolute and unquestionable faith in every god that is the immediate product of spontaneity:* Dada; elegant and unprejudiced leap from a harmony to the other sphere... Freedom: Dada Dada Dada, a roaring of tense colors, and interlacing of opposites and of all contradictions, grotesques, inconsistencies: LIFE."

"To make a Dadaist Poem (1920) Take a newspaper. Take some scissors. Choose from this paper an article the length you want to make your poem. Cut out the article. Next carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag. Shake gently. Next take out each cutting one after the other. Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag. The poem will resemble you. And there you are—an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd."

"If I shout: Ideal, Ideal, Ideal Knowledge, Knowledge, Knowledge, Boomboom, Boomboom, Boomboom I have recorded fairly accurately Progress, Law, Morals, and all the other magnificent qualities that various very intelligent people have discussed in so many books."

"A manifesto is a communication made to the whole world, whose only pretensions is to the discovery of an instant cure for political, astronomical, artistic, parliamentary, agronomical and literary syphilis. It may be pleasant, and good-natured, it's always right, it's strong, vigorous and logical. Apropos of logic, I consider myself very likeable."

"Dada belongs to everybody."

"I know that you have come here today to hear explanations. Well, don't expect to hear any explanations about Dada. You explain to me why you exist. You haven't the faintest idea. You will say: I exist to make my children happy. But in your hearts you know that isn't so. You will say: I exist to guard my country, against barbarian invasions. That's a fine reason. You will say: I exist because God wills. That's a fairy tale for children."

"Dada is not at all modern. It is more in the nature of a return to an almost Buddhist religion of indifference. Dada covers things with an artificial gentleness, a snow of butterflies released from the head of a prestidigitator. Dada is immobility and does not comprehend the passions."

"Nothing is more delightful than to confuse and upset people. People one doesn't like. What's the use of giving them explanations that are merely food for curiosity? The truth is that people love nothing but themselves and their little possessions, their income, their dog. This state of affairs derives from a false conception of property. If one is poor in spirit, one possesses a sure and indomitable intelligence, a savage logic, a point of view that can not be shaken. Try to be empty and fill your brain cells with a petty happiness. Always destroy what you have in you. On random walks.."

"Men are different. It is diversity that makes life interesting. There is no common basis in mens minds. The unconscious is inexhaustible and uncontrollable. Its force surpasses us. It is as mysterious as the last particle of a brain cell. Even if we knew it, we could not reconstruct it."

"Art has not the celestial and universal value that people like to attribute to it. Life is far more interesting. Dada knows the correct measure that should be given to art: with subtle, perfidious methods, Dada introduces it into daily life. And vice versa. In art, Dada reduces everything to an initial simplicity, growing always more relative. It mingles its caprices with the chaotic wind of creation and the barbaric dances of savage tribes. It wants logic reduced to a personal minimum."

"You will often hear that Dada is a state of mind. You may be gay, sad, afflicted, joyous, melancholy or Dada. Without being literary, you can be romantic, you can be dreamy, weary, eccentric, a businessman, skinny, transfigured, vain, amiable or Dada... Dada is here, there and a little everywhere, such as it is, with its faults, with its personal differences and distinctions which it accepts and views with indifference."

"We Dadaists are often told that we are incoherent, but into this word people try to put an insult that it is rather hard for me to fathom. Everything is incoherent... There is no logic... The acts of life have no beginning and no end. Everything happens in a completely idiotic way. That is why everything is alike. Simplicity is called Dada. Any attempt to conciliate an inexplicable momentary state with logic strikes me as a boring kind of game... Like everything in life, Dada is useless... Perhaps you will understand me better when I tell you that Dada is a virgin microbe that penetrates with the insistence of air into all of the spaces that reason has not been able to fill with words or conventions."

"Perhaps we'll be able to do beautiful things, since I have a stellar, insane desire to assassinate beauty."

"Splendid, it has done me enormous good to finally see and read something in Switzerland that isn't bullshit. All of it is very nice, it is really something; your manifesto expresses every philosophy seeking truth, when there is no truth, only convention."

"Dada was founded in Zurich in the spring of 1916 by Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, Jean Arp, w:Marcel Janco and w:Richard Huelsenbeck at the w:Cabaret Voltaire [in Zurich, Switzerland]... Through Tzara we were also in relation with the Futurist movement and carried on a correspondence with Marinetti. By that time Boccioni had been killed, but all of us knew his thick book, Pittura e scultuptura Futuriste. We regarded Marinetti's position as realistic, and were opposed to it, although we were glad to take over the concept of 'spontaneity', of which he made so much use. Tzara for the first time had poems recited simultaneously on the stage, and these performances were a great success, although the 'poeme simultane' had already been introduced in France by Dereme and others."

"In May 1922, Dada staged its own funeral. According to Hans Richter, the main part of this took place in Weimar, where the Dadaists attended a festival of the German w:Bauhaus art school, during which Tzara proclaimed the elusive nature of his art: 'Dada is useless, like everything else in life... Dada is a virgin microbe which penetrates with the insistence of air into all those spaces that reason has failed to fill with words and conventions.'"

"Tzara would draw slips of paper with words described on them from a hat, and present the resulting combination of words as a poem. [Hans] Arp allowed cut-outs of free or geometric shapes to arrange themselves in a random order, then pasted them on a surface and presented the result as a picture."

"Kodra est le père d'une nouvelle civilisation du monde."

"His fables so brutally imposed, sweated by heart. Their morality is a prison which I don't want to penetrate anymore."

"Une femme est plus belle que le monde où je vis, Et je ferme les yeux."

"Il y a assurément un autre monde, mais il est dans celui-ci..."

"Structures of lines, surfaces, forms, colours. They try to approach the eternal, the inexpressible above men. They are a denial of human egotism. They are the hatred of human immodesty, the hatred of images, of paintings.. Wisdom [is] the feeling for the coming reality, the mystical, the definite indefinite, the greatest definite."

"I met Sophie Taeuber in Zurich in 1915. Even then she already knew how to give direct and palpable shape to her inner reality. In those days this kind of art was called 'abstract art'. Now it is known as 'concrete art,' for nothing is more concrete than the psychic reality it expresses. Like music this art is tangible inner reality she was already dividing the surface of a watercolor into squares and rectangles which she juxtaposed horizontally and perpendicularly. She constructed her painting like a work of masonry. The colors are luminous, going from rawest yellow to deep red or.. ..blue."

"We [Hans Arp and Sophie Taeuber ] painted embroidered and made collages. All these works were drawn from the simplest forms and were probably the first examples of concrete art. These works are realities pure and independent with no meaning or cerebral intention. We rejected all mimesis and description, giving free reign to the elementary and spontaneous."

"the streams buck like rams in a tent whips crack and from the hills come the crookedly combed shadows of the shepherds. black eggs and fools' bells fall from the trees. thunder drums and kettledrums beat upon the ears of the donkeys. wings brush against flowers. fountains spring up in the eyes of the wild boar."

"I hereby declare that on February 8th, 1916, Tristan Tzara discovered the word DADA. I was present with my twelve children when Tzara pronounced for the first time this word which has aroused in us such legitimate enthusiasm. This took place at the Café Terrasse in Zurich, and I wore a brioche in my left nostril. I am convinced that this word has no importance and that only imbeciles and Spanish professors can be interested in dates. What interests us is the Dada spirit and we were all Dada before the existence of Dada. The first Holy Virgins I painted date from 1886, when I was a few months old and amused myself by pissing graphic impressions. The morality of idiots and their belief in geniuses makes me shit."

"Dadaism has launched an attack on the fine arts. It has declared art to be a magic opening of the bowels, administered an enema to the Venus of Milo, and finally enabled 'Laocoon and Sons' to ease themselves after a thousand-year struggle with the rattlesnake. Dadaism has reduced positive and negative to utter nonsense. It has been destructive in order to achieve indifference."

"In recent times, Surrealist painters have used descriptive illusionistic academic methods."

"Concretion signifies the material process of condensation, hardening, coagulating, thickening, growing together. Concretion designates the solidification of a mass. Concretion designates curdling, the curdling of the earth and the heavenly bodies. Concretion designates solidification, the mass of the stone, the plant, the animal, the man. Concretion is something that has grown. I want my work to find it."

"A painting or sculpture not modeled on any real object is every bit as concrete and sensuous as a leaf or a stone.. ..[but] it is an incomplete art which privileges the intellect to the detriment of the senses.. .[art must be like..] fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant or a child in it's mother's womb."

"art is fruit growing out of man like the fruit out of a plant like the child out of the mother. While the fruit of the plant grows independent forms and never resembles a balloon or a president in a cutaway suit the artistic fruit of man shows for the most part a ridiculous resemblance to the appearance of other things. Reason tells man to stand above nature and to be the measure of all things. thus man thinks he is able to live and to create against the laws of nature and he creates abortions. through reason man became a tragic and ugly figure. i dare say he would create even his children in the form of vases with umbilical cords if he could do so. reason has cut man off from nature."

"Revolted by the butchery of the 1914 World War, we in Zurich devoted ourselves to the arts. While guns rumbled in the distance, we sang, painted, made collages and wrote poems with all our might. We were seeking an art based on fundamentals, to cure the madness of the age, and find a new order of things that would restore the balance between heaven and hell. We had a dim premonition that power-mad gangsters would one day use art itself as a way of deadening men's minds."

"As the thought comes to me to exorcise and transform this black with a white drawing, it has already become a surface.. .Now I have lost all fear, and begin to draw on the black surface."

"These paintings, these sculptures – these objects – should remain anonymous, in the great workshop of nature, like the clouds, the mountains, the seas, the animals, and man himself. Yes! Man should go back to nature! Artists should work together like the artists of the Middle Ages."

"[art] urges man to identify himself with nature."

"Automatic poetry comes straight out of the poet's bowels or out of any other of his organs that has accumulated reserves.. .He crows, swears, moans, stammers, yodels, according to his mood.. .His poems are like nature; they stink, laugh, and rhyme like nature. Foolishness, or at least what men calls foolishness is as precious to him as a sublime piece of rhetoric. For in nature a broken twig is equal in beauty and importance to the clouds and the stars."

"Whatever became of Kurt Schwitters' novel 'Franz Müllers Drahtfrühling' [Franz Müller's Wire Spring] several chapters of which we composed together? Is it buried under the bomb ruins of his house on Waldhausenstrasse in Hannover? For hours, Schwitters and I sat together and spun dialogue, in rhapsody. He took these writings and channeled them into his novel...We sat together again, writing 'Franz Müllers Drahtfrühling':"

"Then we went down to his work room, in the horrible beautiful Merz grotto [the 'Merz-Haus', built by Kurt Schwitters, where broken wheels paired with matchboxes, wire lattices with brushes without bristles, rusted wheels with curious Merz cucumbers.. .How often did we 'p-lay' in this room! Schwitters called playing, considering the sweat, working. There we glued together our paper pictures, and as I tossed away one of my glued-together works one morning, Schwitters asked, 'You don't like it? Can I have it?' – 'What do you want with this failed piece of toast?' Schwitters took a good look at it and said, 'I'll put what's on top on the bottom, I'll stick a little Merz nose in this corner and I'll sign the bottom Kurt Schwitters.' And, yes indeed, this collage became a wonderful picture by Kurt Schwitters. Schwitters was a wizard, just as Hokusai was a wizard."

"Sculpture should walk on the tips of its toes, unostentatious, unpretentious, and light as the spoor of an animal in snow. Art should melt into and even merge with nature itself. This is obviously contrary to painting and sculpture based on nature. By so doing, art will rid itself more and more of self-centredness, virtuosity and absurdity."

"The man who speaks and writes about art should refrain from censuring or pontificating. He will thus avoid doing anything foolish, for in the presence of primordial depth all art is but dream and nature."

"A deep and serene silence filled her structures composed of colors and surfaces. The exclusive use of horizontal and vertical rectangular planes in the work of art, the extreme simplification, exerted a decisive influence on my work. Here I found, stripped down to the limit, the essential elements of all earthly constructions: the bursting, upward surge of the lines and the planes toward the sky, the verticality of pure life, and the vast equilibrium, the sheer horizontality and expansiveness of dreamlike peace. Her work was for me a symbol of a divinely built 'house' which man in his vanity has ravaged and sullied."

"In 1915 Sophie Taeuber and I carried out our first works in the simplest forms, using painting, embroidery and pasted paper [without using oil colors to avoid any reference with usual painting]. These were probably the first manifestations of their kind, pictures that were their own reality, without meaning or cerebral intention. We rejected everything in the nature of a copy or a description, in order to give free flow to what was elemental and spontaneous."

"It was Sophie [Taeuber] who, by the example of her work and her life, both of them bathed in clarity, showed me the right way. In her world, the high and the low, the light and the dark, the eternal and the ephemeral, are balanced in prefect equilibrium."

"By the time I was 16, the everlasting copying of stuffed birds and withered flowers at the Strasbourg School of Applied Art not only poisoned drawing for me but destroyed my taste for all artistic activity. I took refuge in poetry."

"I tried to be natural, in other words the exact opposite of what drawing teachers call 'faithful to nature'. I made my first experiments with free form."

"Dada was given the Venus of Milo a clyster and has allowed the Laocoön and his sons to rest awhile, after thousands of years of struggle with the good sausage Python. The philosophers are of less use to Dada than an old toothbrush, and it leaves them on the scrap heap for the great leaders of the world."

"We do not wish to copy nature. We do not want to reproduce, we want to produce. We want to produce as a plant produces a fruit and does not itself reproduce. We want to produce directly and without meditation. As there is not the least trace of abstraction in this art, we will call it concrete art."

"I wanted to find another order, another value for man in nature. He should no longer be the measure of all things, nor should everything be compared with him, but, on the contrary, all things, and man as well, should be like nature, without measure. I wanted to create new appearances, to extract new forms from man. This is made clear in my objects from 1917."

"Already in 1915, Sophie Taeuber [his wife] divides the surface of her aquarelle into squares and rectangles which she then juxtaposes horizontally and perpendicularly [as Mondrian, Itten and Paul Klee did in the same period]. She constructs them as if they were masonry work. The colors are luminous, ranging from the raw yellow to deep red or blue."

"I allow myself to be guided by the work which is in the process of being born, I have confidence in it [Arp refers to 'automatic creation of art']. I do not think about it. The forms arrive pleasant, or strange, hostile, inexplicable, mute, or drowsy. They are born from themselves. It seems to me as if all I do is move my hands."

"In the good times of Dada, we detested polished works, the distracted air of spiritual struggle, the titans, and we rejected them with all out being."

"Like the disposition of planes, the proportion of these planes and their colors seemed to depend only upon chance, and I declared that these works were ordered 'according to the law of chance', just like in the order of nature."

"Since the time of the cavemen, man has glorified himself, has made himself divine, and his monstrous vanity has caused human catastrophe. Art has collaborated in this false development. I find this concept of art which has sustained man's vanity to be loathsome."

"I like nature but not its substitutes. Naturalist art, illusionism, is a substitute for nature. I remember that in arguing with Piet Mondrian [in Paris, 1920's], he opposed art to nature saying that art is artificial and nature is natural. I do not share this opinion. I do not think that nature is in natural opposition to art. Art's origins are natural."

"Each one of these bodies [art-works which Arp made] certainly signifies something, but it is only once there is nothing left for me to change that I begin to look for its meaning, that I give it a name."

"I did exhibitions with the Surrealists [in Paris, c. 1929] because their attitude revolted against 'art' and their attitude toward life itself was wise, as was Dada's."

"These collages were static symmetrical constructions, portico's with pathetic vegetation, the gateway to the realm of dreams. They were done with colored paper in black, orange or blue dye plates. Although cubist painting interested me very much, not a trace of their influence was to be found in my collages."

"Actually, it was in Paris in 1914 that I did my first collages, for an occultist friend. They were mysterious portico's which were supposed to replace mural paintings and which evoked the structure of palm branches or fish-bones. [remark on the first collages Arp made, in different materials]"

"Ever since my childhood, I was haunted by the search for perfection. An imperfectly cut paper literally made me ill, I would guillotine it. My collages came undone, they became blistered. I then introduced death and decay in my compositions. I reacted by avoiding any precision from one day to another. Instead of cutting the paper, I would tear it with my hands."

"At daybreak I found on my sculptor's turntable a little mischievous form [a small plaster form of Impish Form, Arp made in 1949], alert and somewhat obese, with a stomach like a lute. It seemed to me like an imp. I called it that. And all of a sudden one day this little character, this imp, through a Venezuelan medium, found itself to be the father of a giant [Arp enlarged it]. This giant son resembles its father like an egg resembles another egg, a fig another fig, a bell another bell."

"To be full of joy when looking at an oeuvre is not a little thing."

"Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation.. ..tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation."

"Dada aimed to destroy the reasonable deceptions of man and recover the natural and unreasonable order."

"Yes, I deal with accidents, just as Arp admits it all the time. And I admit it, too. But I like to have them under my command and not sign them because they are accidents."

"As we liked to do as children, extracting from the soft forest floor the light chestnut trees only a few centimeters high at the base of which the chestnut continues to shine to the sun its clods of soil from the past, the chestnut conserving all of its presence and witnessing with its presence the power of green hands, of shadow, of airy white or pink pyramids of dances.. ..and of future chestnuts which, under new dust, would be discovered by the marveled sight of other children. It is in this perspective that the work of Arp, more than any other, should be situated. He found the most vital in himself in the secrets of this germinating life where the most minimal detail is of the greatest importance, where, on the other hand, the distinction between the elements becomes meaningless, adopting a peculiar under the rock humor permanently."

"Arp, yes, was one of the artists that I was interested in. And that reminds me of a friend of those times, Frederick Kiesler, who was an architect and painter, a man of all trades, and who said this word about Arp: 'This is Arp, not art.' [Laughs]"

"Based on the metaphysical implications of the Dadaist dogma.. .Arp's Reliefs [carvings] between 1916 and 1922 are among the most convincing illustrations of that anti- rationalistic era...Arp showed the importance of a smile to combat the sophistic theories of the moment. His poems of the same period stripped the word of its rational connotation to attain the most unexpected meaning through alliteration or plain nonsense."

"Tzara would draw [during Dada-evenings in Zürich, Switzerland] slips of paper with words described on them from a hat, and present the resulting combination of words as a poem. Arp allowed cut-outs of free or geometric shapes to arrange themselves in a random order, then pasted them on a surface and presented the result as a picture. In the course of such experiments Arp also used 'automatic writing', i.e.: irrational, spontaneously traced forms, rising from the unconsciousness."

"We visited Meudon [c.1938] to see Hans Arp and though, to our disappointment, he was not there and his wife, Sophie Taeuber showed us his studio. It was very quiet in the room so that one was aware of the movement in the forms.. .I thought of the poetic idea in Arp's sculptures. I had never had any first-hand knowledge of the Dadaist movement, so that seeing his work for the first time freed me of many inhibitions and this helped me to see the figure in landscape with new eyes.. .Perhaps in freeing himself from material demands his idea transcended all possible limitations. I began to imagine the earth rising and becoming human."

"Dada was founded in Zurich in the spring of 1916 by Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, Jean Arp, Marcel Janco and Richard Huelsenbeck at the Cabaret Voltaire [in Zurich, Switzerland].. .Arp was an Alsatian; he had lived through the beginning of the war and the whole nationalistic frenzy in Paris, and was pretty well disgusted with all the petty chicanery there, and in general with the sickening changes that had taken place in the city and the people on which we had all squandered our love before the war [World War 1., 1914-1918]."

"Mr. Arp hated shiny sculptures. He hated that. Because if it's shiny, you can't appreciate the form. It creates reflections."

"I never stood under the influence of Dadaism because whereas the Dadaist created Spiegel-dadaismus (Mirror-Dada) on the Zurich Lake [the 'political Dada'], I created MERZ on the Leine-river, under the influence of Rembrandt. Time went on, and when Jean Arp made concrete Art, I stayed Abstract. Now I do concrete Art, and Marcel Duchamp went over to the Surrealists.. ..and at all I have much fun about Art."

"Europe is only powerful; India is beautiful."

"Europe is organized, marvellously organized; but India is cultivated."

"The Hindu religion in its popular expression, as one can see it, is in sum the pre-Byzantine Greek religion, and all the ancient Aryan religions of Europe, minus the tribal spirit and, generally, plus the goodness and the respect for all beings."

"The Hindu Aryas are, among the modern peoples of similar race and language, the only great people to have conserved a living Aryan religion. That is their most beautiful entitlement to glory, the secret of their strength and pride, even in the midst of all their misery the secret of their freedom under all the past and future phases of foreign domination."

"The day when the whole of India will break its idols and worship God after his fashion, that day he will be Indian, like the Afghan across the mountains is an Afghan... but until then, he will remain in India a conqueror who remembers his old victories, the master of India cheated of his prey by the late-coming British, whom he accuses, in spite of the benefits they heap upon him, of favouring the Hindus.... The Indian Christian is a Hindu unaware of himself."

"Hinduism is really superior to other religions, not for its spirituality, but for that still more precious thing it gives to its followers: a scientific outlook on religion and on life. Hindu spirituality is a consequence of that very outlook. We consider it useless to oppose: India to the “West,” as “spiritualistic” opposed to “materialistic.” Hindu superiority lies elsewhere; not in the opposition of Hindu thought to European thought, but in the fact of its greater consistency than that of European thought, of its greater faithfulness to life, of greater harmony between life and it; in the universality of the Hindu’s scientific outlook, compared to that of the Europeans."

"Long centuries before any foreigner had settled in India, the unity of the country was materialised in symbols. What more suggestive story than that, for instance, of Sati, Siva’s wife, whose body, divided, after her death, in fifty-one pieces, is lying still in fifty-one different places, therefore revered as “tirthasthans,” throughout the Indian Peninsula? One lies near Peshawar, one in Kamakhya, not far from India’s eastern boundaries; one in Benares, one in the very extreme South, others here and there. Fifty-one pieces, but one body; fifty-one “tirthasthans” in the name of the same Goddess, scattered over the same territory. Indeed, among the different interpretations that can be given of the legend of Sati, one can take it in this light: Sati is India herself, personified; India’s soil, sacred from end to end, is, with all its variety, the actual body of one great Goddess... And Indian nationalism means: devotion to this great Goddess."

"I worship impersonal Nature, which is neither "good" or "bad", and who knows neither love nor hatred. I worship Life; the Sun, Sustainer of life. I believe in the Law of everlasting struggle, which is the law of life, and in the duty of the best specimens of our race — the natural élite of mankind — to rule the earth, and evolve out of themselves a caste of supermen, a people 'like unto the Gods'."

"To those privileged ones -- among whom we count ourselves -- the high-resounding "isms" to which their contemporaries ask them to give their allegiance are all equally futile: bound to be betrayed, defeated, and finally rejected by men at large, if containing anything really noble; bound to enjoy, for the time being, some sort of noisy success, if sufficiently vulgar, pretentious, and soul-killing to appeal to the growing number of mechanically conditioned slaves that crawl about our planet, posing as free men; all destined to prove, ultimately, of no avail."

"A 'civilization' that makes such a ridiculous fuss about alleged 'war crimes' -- acts of violence against the actual or potential enemies of one's cause -- and tolerates slaughterhouses and vivisection laboratories, and circuses and the fur industry (infliction of pain upon creatures that can never be for or against any cause), does not deserve to live. Out with it! Blessed the day it will destroy itself, so that a healthy, hard, frank and brave, nature-loving and truth-loving élite of supermen with a life-centered faith,-- a natural human aristocracy, as beautiful, on its own higher level, as the four-legged kings of the jungle -- might again rise, and rule upon its ruins, for ever!"

"In the Third Reich, even schoolchildren knew from their textbooks that this [= the Aryan] race had spread from the north to the south and east, and not the other way around."

"I asked Savitri ... how she would have received her mother. Without batting an eyelid, she said: 'I would have shot her.'"

"For the period from her birth until after World War 2, we have to trust Savitri Devi Mukherji for her life story. However, it is obvious that she herself has arranged her biography a posteriori in order to harmonize it with the themes defended in her books... It is evident and very clear that Savitri Devi Mukherji has 'arranged' her biography in order to construct herself a persona apt to shine in the tiny circle of neo-Nazism."

"Savitri Devi's paganism was a very modern philosophy of submersion in the purely physical, a biological materialism exalted to the status of a religion. Obviously, genuine Pagan philosophers with their own views of the transcendent dimension would hardly have recognized their own worldview in this reductionist quasi-Darwinism."

"The Aryan Invasion Theory, along with the concomitant racialist understanding of the caste system as a kind of Apartheid system to preserve the Aryan's racial purity, was the alpha and omega of Savitri Devi's own worldview."

"As for the Nazi connection, let us at any rate be clear about an easily verifiable fact: in so far as the Nazis cared about Indian history, they favoured the AIT. ... In fact, after reading her autobiography, “Memories and Reflexions of an Aryan Lady”, there is not the slightest doubt left that for her and her husband, their belief in the AIT, along with their distortive reinterpretation of Hindu tradition in terms of the AIT, was the direct cause of their enthusiasm for Hitler."

"[Perhaps] she developed her crassly racist views of inter-caste relations only later, projecting them back onto her Hindu activist period when she wrote her autobiography thirty-five years after the fact. My impression is that in the 1930s, she was much more moderate in this respect."

"The greatest fighter after Adolf Hitler, Rudolf Hess and Joseph Goebbels. Moreover she was the first to discover the secret and spiritual power behind Hitlerism."

"… necessitating the unilateral choice of one of three orientations […] I would summarize the disjointed temporal multiple which organizes our site in the following manner:"

"The initial thesis of my enterprise - on the basis of which this entanglement of periodizations is organized by extracting the sense of each - is the following: the science of being qua being has existed since the Greeks - such is the sense and status of mathematics. However, it is only today that we have the means to know this. It follows from this thesis that philosophy is not centred on ontology - which exists as a separate and exact discipline- rather it circulates between this ontology (this, mathematics), the modern theories of he subject and its own history. The contemporary complex of the conditions of philosophy includes everything referred to in my first three statements: the history of ‘Western’ thought, post-Cantorian mathematics, psychoanalysis, contemporary art and politics. Philosophy does not coincide with any of these conditions; nor does it map out the totality to which they belong. What philosophy must do is propose a conceptual framework in which the contemporary compossibilty of these conditions can be grasped. Philosophy can only do this - and this is what frees it from any foundational ambition, in which it would lose itself- by designating amongst its own conditions, as a singular discursive situation, ontology itself in the form of pure mathematics. This is precisely what delivers philosophy and ordains it to the care of truths."

"Introduction, p.3-4"

"I then arrived at the certainty that it was necessary to posit that mathematics writes that which, of being itself, is pronounceable in the field of a pure theory of the Multiple. The entire history of rational thought appeared to me to be illuminated once one assumed the hypothesis that mathematics, far from being a game without object, draws the exceptional severity of its law from being bound to support the discourse of ontology."

"If the establishment of the thesis 'mathematics is ontology' is the basis of this book, it is in no way its goal."

"This book founds a doctrine which is effectively post-Cartesian, or even post-Lacanian, a doctrine of what, for thought, both un-binds the Heidegerean connection between being and truth and institutes the subject, not as support or origin, but as fragment of the process of a truth."

"If one category had to be designated as an emblem of my thought, it would be neither Cantor's pure multiple, nor Godel's constructible, nor the void, by which being is named, nor even the event, in which the supplement of what-is-not-being-qua-being originates. It would be the generic."

"Since its Parmenidean organization, ontology has built the portico of its ruined temple out of the following experience: what presents itself is essentially multiple; what presents itself is essentially one. The reciprocity of the one and being is certainly the inaugural axiom of philosophy - Leibniz formulation is excellent; 'What is not a being is not a being - yet it is also its impasse; an impasse in which the revolving doors of Plato's Parmenides introduce us to the singular joy of never seeing the moment of conclusion arrive. For if being is one, then one must posit that what is not one, the multiple, is not . But this is unacceptable for thought because what is presented is multiple and one cannot see how there could be an access to being outside all presentation. If presentation is not, does it still make sense to designate what presents (itself) as being? On the other hand, if presentation is, then the multiple necessarily is."

"We find ourselves on the brink of a decision, a decision to break with the arcana of the one and the multiple in which philosophy is born and buried, phoenix of its own sophistic consumption."

"Everything turns on mastering the gap between the presupposition (that must be rejected) of a being of the one and the thesis of its 'there is'."

"According to the way it is generally used today, the term 'ethics' relates above all to the domain of human rights, 'the rights of man'- or, by derivation, the rights of living beings. We are supposed to assume the existence of a universally recognizable human subject possessing 'rights' that are in some sense natural: the right to live, to avoid abusive, to enjoy 'fundamental' liberties (of opinion, of expression, of democratic choice in the election of governments, etc.) These rights are held to be self-evident, and the result of a wide consensus. 'Ethics' is a matter of busying ourselves with these rights, of making sure that they are respected."

"In the political domain, deprived of any collective politcal landmark, stripped of any notion of the 'meaning of History’; and no longer able to hope for or expect a social revolution, many intellectuals, along with much of public opinion, have been won over to the logic of a capitalist economy and a parliamentary democracy."

"The heart of the question concerns the presumption of a universal human Subject, capable of reducing ethical issues to matters of human rights and humanitarian actions. We have seen that ethics subordinates the identification of this subject to the universal recognition of the evil that is done to him. Ethics defines man as a victim. It will be objected: 'No! You are forgetting the active subject, the one that intervenes against barbarism!' So let us be precise: man is the being who is capable of recognizing himself as a victim."

"Truth is a new word in Europe (and elsewhere)."

"Without mathematics, we are blind."

"It is thus quite simply false that whereof one cannot speak (in the sense of 'there is nothing to say about it that specifies it and grants it separating properties'), thereof one must be silent. It must on the contrary be named."

"The cinema is a place of intrinsic indiscernibility between art and non-art."

"It must be said that today, at the end of its semantic evolution, the word 'terrorist' is an intrinsically propagandistic term. It has no neutral readability. It dispenses with all reasoned examination of political situations, of their causes and consequences."

"If there exists one unique great imperial power which is always convinced that its most brutal interests coincide with the Good; if it is true that every year the USA spends more on their military budget than Russia, China, France, England and Germany put together; and if that Nation-State, devoted to military excess, has no public idol other than wealth, no allies other than servants, and no view of other peoples apart from an indifferent, commercial and cynical one; then the basic freedom of States, peoples and individuals consists in doing everything and thinking everything in order to escape, as much as possible, from the commandments, interventions and interference of that imperial power."

"In my view, only those who have had the courage to work through Lacan's anti-philosophy without faltering deserve to be called 'contemporary philosophers'."

"Art attests to what is inhuman in man."

"I am surprised to see that today everything that does not amount to surrender pure and simple to generalized capitalism, let us call it thus, is considered to be archaic or old-fashioned, as though in a way there existed no other definition of what it means to be modern than, quite simply, to be at all times caught in the dominant forms of the moment."

"Let us say in passing that since (philosophical) remedies are often worse than the malady, our age, in order to be cured of the Plato sickness, has swallowed such doses of a relativist, vaguely skeptical, lightly spiritualist and insipidly moralist medicine, that it is in the process of gently dying, in the small bed of its supposed democratic comfort."

"We live in a contradiction, a brutal state of affairs, profoundly inegalitarian – where all existence is evaluated in terms of money alone – is presented to us as ideal. To justify their conservatism, the partisans of the established order cannot really call it ideal or wonderful. So instead, they have decided to say that all the rest is horrible. Sure, they say, we may not live in a condition of perfect Goodness. But we’re lucky that we don’t live in a condition of Evil. Our democracy is not perfect. But it’s better than the bloody dictatorships. Capitalism is unjust. But it’s not criminal like Stalinism. We let millions of Africans die of AIDS, but we don’t make racist nationalist declarations like Milosevic. We kill Iraqis with our airplanes, but we don’t cut their throats with machetes like they do in Rwanda, etc."

"Badiou is, by any criteria, one of the most significant and original philosophers working in France today and perhaps the only serious rival of Deleuze and Derrida for that meaningless but unavoidable title of 'most important contemporary French philosopher'."

"Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need."

"To disappear into deep water or to disappear toward a far horizon, to become part of depth of infinity, such is the destiny of man that finds its image in the destiny of water."

"A man is a man to the extent that he is a superman. A man should be defined by the sum of those tendencies which impel him to surpass the human condition."

"True poetry is a function of awakening. It awakens us, but it must retain the memory of previous dreams."

"The reflected world is the conquest of calm"

"If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace."

"Words … are little houses, each with its cellar and garret. Common sense lives on the ground floor, always ready to engage in ‘foreign commerce’ on the same level as the others, as the passers-by, who are never dreamers. To go upstairs in the word house is to withdraw step by step; while to go down to the cellar is to dream, it is losing oneself in the distant corridors of an obscure etymology, looking for treasures that cannot be found in words. To mount and descend in the words themselves—this is a poet’s life. To mount too high or descend too low is allowed in the case of poets, who bring earth and sky together."

"The mollusk's motto would be: one must live to build one's house, and not build one's house to live in."

"Poetry is one of the destinies of speech.... One would say that the poetic image, in its newness, opens a future to language."

"Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls."

"A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream."

"I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the word begin to move around. Stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like an overload which is too heavy and prevents dreaming. Then words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young. And the words wander away, looking in the nooks and crannies of vocabulary for new company, bad company."

"Childhood lasts all through life. It returns to animate broad sections of adult life.... Poets will help us to find this living childhood within us, this permanent, durable immobile world."

"The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears the truth."

"Reverie is not a mind vacuum. It is rather the gift of an hour which knows the plenitude of the soul."

"The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest. The repose of the night does not belong to us. It is not the possession of our being. Sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms. In the morning we must sweep out the shadows."

"Man is an imagining being."

"The words of the world want to make sentences."

"To live life well is to express life poorly; if one expresses life too well, one is living it no longer."

"There is no original truth, only original error."

"To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry."

"Ideas are invented only as correctives to the past. Through repeated rectifications of this kind one may hope to disengage an idea that is valid."

"A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language."

"Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books."

"One must always maintain one’s connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it. To remain in touch with the past requires a love of memory. To remain in touch with the past requires a constant imaginative effort."

"Two half philosophers will probably never a whole metaphysician make."

"Even a minor event in the life of a child is an event of that child’s world and thus a world event."

""Memory is a field full of psychological ruins," wrote French philosopher Gaston Bachelard. For some that may be true, but memory is also a field of healing that has the capacity to restore the world, not only for the one person who recollects, but for cultures as well. When a person says "I remember," all things are possible."

"L'originalité consiste à essayer de faire comme tout le monde sans y parvenir."

"Tout âge porte ses fruits, il faut savoir les cueillir."

"Les manoeuvres inconscientes d'une âme pure sont encore plus singulières que les combinaisons du vice"

"People must help one another; it is nature's law."

"Everyone calls himself a friend, but only a fool relies on it; nothing is commoner than the name, nothing rarer than the thing."

"Everyone believes very easily whatever they fear or desire."

"To live lightheartedly but not recklessly; to be gay without being boisterous; to be courageous without being bold; to show trust and cheerful resignation without fatalism — this is the art of living."

"We then saw what St. Jerome said of those who serve God and those who serve the world: "Each to the other we seem insane": Invicem insanire videmur. There is a never-ending duel between the two."

"L'histoire, encore que mensongère, Contient des vérités qui servent de leçons. Tout parle en mon ouvrage, et même les poissons. Ce qu'ils disent s'adresse à tout tant que nous sommes; Je me sers d'animaux pour instruire les hommes."

"Je vais t'entretenir de moindres aventures, Te tracer en ces vers de légères peintures; Et si de t'agréer je n'emporte le prix, J'aurai du moins d'honneur de l'avoir entrepris."

"La fourmi n'est pas prêteuse; C'est là son moindre défaut."

"Apprenez que tout flatteur Vit aux dépens de celui qui l'écoute."

"Nous n'écoutons d'instincts que ceux qui sont les nôtres, Et ne croyons le mal que quand il est venu."

"La raison du plus fort est toujours la meilleure."

"Plutôt souffrir que mourir, C'est la devise des hommes."

"A l'oeuvre on connaît l'artisan."

"Je plie, et ne romps pas."

"Les délicats sont malheureux: Rien ne saurait les satisfaire."

"Il faut, autant qu'on peut, obliger tout le monde: On a souvent besoin d'un plus petit que soi."

"Patience et longueur de temps Font plus que force ni que rage."

"C'est double plaisir de tromper le trompeur."

"[On] est bien fou de cerveau Qui prétend contenter tout le monde et son père."

"En toute chose il faut considérer la fin."

"Amour est un étrange maître! Heureux qui peut ne le connaître Que par récit, lui ni ses coups!"

"... ’argent vient-il comme il s’en va ? Je n’y touchois jamais. Dites-moy donc de grace, Reprit l’autre, pourquoy vous vous affligez tant, Puiſque vous ne touchiez jamais à cet argent : Mettez une pierre à la place, Elle vous vaudra tout autant."

"Bref, la fortune a toujours tort."

"Il n'est rien d'inutile aux personnes de sens."

"Il ne faut jamais Vendre la peau de l'ours qu'on ne l'ait mis par terre."

"De la peau du lion l'âne s'étant vêtu, Était craint partout à la ronde."

"Garde-toi, tant que tu vivras, De juger les gens sur la mine."

"Rien ne sert de courir; il faut partir à point."

"Aide-toi, le ciel t'aidera."

"Sur les ailes du Temps la tristesse s'envole."

"The fly of the coach."

"L’enseigne fait la chalandise."

"Plus fait douceur que violence."

"La mort ne surprend point le sage: Il est toujours prêt à partir."

"Rien ne pèse tant qu'un secret."

"Rien n'est si dangereux qu'un ignorant ami; Mieux vaudrait un sage ennemi."

"On rencontre sa destinée Souvent par des chemins qu’on prend pour l’éviter."

"Laissez dire les sots: le savoir a son prix."

"Les gens sans bruit sont dangereux."

"L'homme est ainsi bâti: Quand un sujet l'enflamme L'impossibilité disparaît à son âme."

"Il connaît l’univers, et ne se connaît pas."

"Ventre affamé n'a point d'oreilles."

"No path of flowers leads to glory."

""They are too green", he said, "and only good for fools"."

"We must laugh before we are happy, for fear we die before we laugh at all."

"There is no trace of bitterness in his poetry; one would almost say, there is no indignation before the evils of the world. Of course there is a reaction of indignation in the mind of the reader. La Fontaine knows very well that the reader will be on the side of the lamb against the wolf: there is no need for him to express his own indignation and he never does. In this he differs from those moralists who wrote—and at times magnificently—what one could call ‘la littérature de l’indignation’; in the works of the English moralists, Pope and Swift, and of La Bruyère also, we can perceive the controlled reactions of their wounded sensibility, their revolt against unfairness and cruelty and a burning hankering after some sort of justice. La Fontaine's attitude is that of detachment."

"The Fables belong to comedy; the pure comic vision, different in that respect from that noble hybrid, satire, requires that the reader should appreciate it intellectually without being emotionally involved. In La Fontaine, as in Molière, the detachment of the comic vision prevents the tragic element from making its impact on the reader directly, although the upsetting implications are there. The device of using animals as protagonists makes it easier to assume this attitude of detachment: while we watch the adventures of the animal, although they are our own adventures, we benefit from our ordinary feeling of superiority over the animals; and this feeling of being superior and of being different, which we automatically have, helps us to watch the tragedy of the world from the point of view of the gods."

"But there is more than detachment in La Fontaine. His attitude to life, being a mature one, is therefore complex: a rich blend of sympathy, tenderness and irony. Even his detachment has subtle shades and a phlegmatic grace which is particular to him."

"I entered literary life as a meteor, and I shall leave it like a thunderbolt."

"There are in France some fifty thousand young men of good birth and fairly well off who are encouraged to live a life of complete idleness. They must either cease to exist or must come to see that there can be no happiness, no health even, without regular daily labor of some sort … The need of work is in me."

"I have come to the conclusion that the bed comprehends our whole life; for we were born in it, we live in it, and we shall die in it."

"I took the book from him reverently, and I gazed at these forms incomprehensible to me, but which revealed the immortal thoughts of the greatest shatterer of dreams who had ever dwelt on earth."

"Let us protest and let us be angry, let us be indignant, or let us be enthusiastic, Schopenhauer has marked humanity with the seal of his disdain and of his disenchantment. A disabused pleasure-seeker, he overthrew beliefs, hopes, poetic ideals and chimeras, destroyed the aspirations, ravaged the confidence of souls, killed love, dragged down the chivalrous worship of women, crushed the illusions of hearts, and accomplished the most gigantic task ever attempted by scepticism. He spared nothing with his mocking spirit, and exhausted everything. And even to-day those who execrate him seem to carry in their own souls particles of his thought."

"Great minds that are healthy are never considered geniuses, while this sublime qualification is lavished on brains that are often inferior but are slightly touched by madness."

"Let them respect my convictions, and I will respect theirs!"

"You have the army of mediocrities followed by the multitude of fools. As the mediocrities and the fools always form the immense majority, it is impossible for them to elect an intelligent government."

"There is only one good thing in life, and that is love. And how you misunderstand it! how you spoil it! You treat it as something solemn like a sacrament, or something to be bought, like a dress."

"Love is always love, come whence it may. A heart that beats at your approach, an eye that weeps when you go away are things so rare, so sweet, so precious that they must never be despised."

"Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched."

"A man forced to spend his life without ever having the right, without ever finding the time, to shut himself up all alone, no matter where, to think, to reflect, to work, to dream? Ah! my dear boy, a key, the key of a door which one can lock — this is happiness, mark you, the only happiness!"

"Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist."

"A legal kiss is never as good as a stolen one."

"For several days in succession fragments of a defeated army had passed through the town. They were mere disorganized bands, not disciplined forces. The men wore long, dirty beards and tattered uniforms; they advanced in listless fashion, without a flag, without a leader. All seemed exhausted, worn out, incapable of thought or resolve, marching onward merely by force of habit, and dropping to the ground with fatigue the moment they halted."

"Life seemed to have stopped short; the shops were shut, the streets deserted. Now and then an inhabitant, awed by the silence, glided swiftly by in the shadow of the walls. The anguish of suspense made men even desire the arrival of the enemy."

"The same thing happens whenever the established order of things is upset, when security no longer exists, when all those rights usually protected by the law of man or of Nature are at the mercy of unreasoning, savage force. The earthquake crushing a whole nation under falling roofs; the flood let loose, and engulfing in its swirling depths the corpses of drowned peasants, along with dead oxen and beams torn from shattered houses; or the army, covered with glory, murdering those who defend themselves, making prisoners of the rest, pillaging in the name of the Sword, and giving thanks to God to the thunder of cannon — all these are appalling scourges, which destroy all belief in eternal justice, all that confidence we have been taught to feel in the protection of Heaven and the reason of man."

"At the end of a short time, once the first terror had subsided, calm was again restored. In many houses the Prussian officer ate at the same table with the family. He was often well-bred, and, out of politeness, expressed sympathy with France and repugnance at being compelled to take part in the war. This sentiment was received with gratitude; besides, his protection might be needful some day or other."

"Legitimized love always despises its easygoing brother."

"In the cold light of the morning they almost bore a grudge against the girl for not having secretly sought out the Prussian, that the rest of the party might receive a joyful surprise when they awoke. What more simple? Besides, who would have been the wiser? She might have saved appearances by telling the officer that she had taken pity on their distress. Such a step would be of so little consequence to her. But no one as yet confessed to such thoughts."

"The count uttered several rather risky witticisms, but so tactfully were they said that his audience could not help smiling. Loiseau in turn made some considerably broader jokes, but no one took offence; and the thought expressed with such brutal directness by his wife was uppermost in the minds of all: "Since it's the girl's trade, why should she refuse this man more than another?""

"They held up to admiration all those women who from time to time have arrested the victorious progress of conquerors, made of their bodies a field of battle, a means of ruling, a weapon; who have vanquished by their heroic caresses hideous or detested beings, and sacrificed their chastity to vengeance and devotion. All was said with due restraint and regard for propriety, the effect heightened now and then by an outburst of forced enthusiasm calculated to excite emulation. A listener would have thought at last that the one role of woman on earth was a perpetual sacrifice of her person, a continual abandonment of herself to the caprices of a hostile soldiery. The two nuns seemed to hear nothing, and to be lost in thought. Boule de Suif also was silent."

"At first no one spoke. Boule de Suif dared not even raise her eyes. She felt at once indignant with her neighbors, and humiliated at having yielded to the Prussian into whose arms they had so hypocritically cast her."

"No one looked at her, no one thought of her. She felt herself swallowed up in the scorn of these virtuous creatures, who had first sacrificed, then rejected her as a thing useless and unclean."

"The girl was one of those pretty and charming young creatures who sometimes are born, as if by a slip of fate, into a family of clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no way of being known, understood, loved, married by any rich and distinguished man; so she let herself be married to a little clerk of the Ministry of Public Instruction."

"With women there is neither caste nor rank, for beauty, grace and charm take the place of family and birth. Natural ingenuity, instinct for what is elegant, a supple mind are their sole hierarchy, and often make of women of the people the equals of the very greatest ladies. Mathilde suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself born to enjoy all delicacies and all luxuries."

"What would have happened if she had not lost that necklace? Who knows? who knows? How strange and changeful is life! How small a thing is needed to make or ruin us!"

"I did not love her, I did not even know her. And for all that, I was touched and conquered. I wanted to save her, to sacrifice myself for her, to commit a thousand follies! Strange thing! How does it happen that the presence of a woman overwhelms us so? Is it the power of her grace which enfolds us? Is it the seduction of her beauty and youth, which intoxicates one like wine? Is it not rather the touch of Love, of Love the Mysterious, who seeks constantly to unite two beings, who tries his strength the instant he has put a man and a woman face to face?"

"I was hard hit. I wanted to ask this little girl to marry me. If we had passed eight days together, I should have done so! How weak and incomprehensible a man sometimes is!"

"That was perhaps the only woman I have ever loved — no — that I ever should have loved. Ah, well! who can tell? Circumstances rule one. And then — and then — all passes."

"We live always under the weight of the old and odious customs … of our barbarous ancestors."

"Military men are the scourges of the world."

"Since governments take the right of death over their people, it is not astonishing if the people should sometimes take the right of death over governments."

"Any government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck."

"All the way from Maugham and de Maupassant and Chekhov to Ring Lardner the short story has served to portray the characteristics, the habits, the manners, the morals, the emotions of a nation, a whole people."

"D.H. Lawrence, De Maupassant, Chekhov, and Hemingway were also a great influence on me when I first began to write short stories, very different as they all are. But, then who is there, what modern writer of short stories has not been influenced by those four? They created the modern short story."

"I started out very quiet and I beat Mr. Turgenev. Then I trained hard and I beat Mr. de Maupassant. I’ve fought two draws with Mr. Stendhal, and I think I had an edge in the last one. But nobody’s going to get me in any ring with Mr. Tolstoy unless I’m crazy or I keep getting better."

"Maupassant made two divisions of his spare hours, one for boating, and the other for literature. Every evening in spring, every free day, he ran down to the river whose mysterious current veiled in fog or sparkling in the sun called to him and bewitched him. In the islands in the Seine between Chatou and Port-Marly, on the banks of Sartrouville and Triel he was long noted among the population of boatmen, who have now vanished, for his unwearying biceps, his cynical gaiety of good-fellowship, his unfailing practical jokes, his broad witticisms. … During these long years of his novitiate Maupassant had entered the social literary circles. He would remain silent, preoccupied; and if anyone, astonished at his silence, asked him about his plans he answered simply: "I am learning my trade.""

"The day following the publication of "Boule de Suif," his reputation began to grow rapidly. … From this time on, Maupassant, at the solicitation of the entire press, set to work and wrote story after story. His talent, free from all influences, his individuality, are not disputed for a moment. With a quick step, steady and alert, he advanced to fame, a fame of which he himself was not aware, but which was so universal, that no contemporary author during his life ever experienced the same. … He was now rich and famous . . . He is esteemed all the more as they believe him to be rich and happy. But they do not know that this young fellow with the sunburnt face, thick neck and salient muscles whom they invariably compare to a young bull at liberty, and whose love affairs they whisper, is ill, very ill. At the very moment that success came to him, the malady that never afterwards left him came also, and, seated motionless at his side, gazed at him with its threatening countenance. … The famous young man trembled in secret and was haunted by all kinds of terrors."

"The classical things are really quite marvelous, you know. It's just they have degenerated into a kind of "well-made-story" of our time. But you could learn forever from them. Look at Maupassant's very short stories. Those wonderful short stories about soldiers. They are just beautiful. He could do everything in three pages. And academics, of course, were scared to use those to teach kids to write, cause they'd never learn how to make the "well-made-story.""

"I was exposed to Dickens, Dumas, Victor Hugo, de Maupassant, Balzac."

"Our father who art in heaven Stay there And we will stay here on earth Which is sometimes so pretty"

"An orange on the table Your robe on the carpet And you in my bed Sweet present of the present Coolness of the night Warmth of my life."

"It's terrible the faint sound of a hard boiled egg firmly cracked on a tin counter it's terrible this faint sound when it stirs the memory of a starving man"

"I am what I am I was made this way When I want to laugh Yes I shriek with laughter I love those who love me It's my fault If they're not the same That I love everytime I am what I am I was made this way What more do you want What do you want from me"

"Le mal de prendre une hypallage pour une découverte, une métaphore pour une démonstration, un vomissement de mots pour un torrent de connaissances capitales, et soi-même pour un oracle, ce mal naît avec nous."

"Collect all the facts that can be collected about the life of Racine and you will never learn from them the art of his verse. All criticism is dominated by the outworn theory that the man is the cause of the work as in the eyes of the law the criminal is the cause of the crime. Far rather are they both the effects."

"Vous n’avez ni la patience qui tisse les longues vies, ni le sentiment de l’irrégularité, ni le sens de la place la plus exquise d’une chose, … « L’intelligence, pour vous, n’est pas une chose comme les autres. […] vous l’adorez comme une bête prépondérante. […] Un particulier qu’elle enivre, compare sa pensée aux décisions des lois, aux faits eux-mêmes, nés de la foule et de la durée : il confond le rapide changement de son cœur avec la variation imperceptible des formes réelles et des Êtres durables. … C’est par cette loi que l’intelligence méprise les lois... et vous encouragez sa violence ! Vous en êtes fous jusqu’au moment de la peur. Car vos idées sont terribles et vos cœurs faibles. Vos pitiés, vos cruautés sont absurdes, sans calme, comme irrésistibles. Enfin, vous craignez le sang, de plus en plus. Vous craignez le sang et le temps."

"We civilizations now know ourselves mortal."

"For the musician, before he has begun his work, all is in readiness so that the operation of his creative spirit may find, right from the start, the appropriate matter and means, without any possibility of error. He will not have to make this matter and means submit to any modification; he need only assemble elements which are clearly defined and ready-made. But in how different a situation is the poet! Before him is ordinary language, this aggregate of means which are not suited to his purpose, not made for him. There have not been physicians to determine the relationships of these means for him; there have not been constructors of scales; no diapason, no metronome, no certitude of this kind. He has nothing but the coarse instrument of the dictionary and the grammar. Moreover, he must address himself not to a special and unique sense like hearing, which the musician bends to his will, and which is, besides, the organ par excellence of expectation and attention; but rather to a general and diffused expectation, and he does so through a language which is a very odd mixture of incoherent stimuli."

"Poetry is simply literature reduced to the essence of its active principle. It is purged of idols of every kind, of realistic illusions, of any conceivable equivocation between the language of "truth" and the language of "creation.""

"Science is feasible when the variables are few and can be enumerated; when their combinations are distinct and clear. We are tending toward the condition of science and aspiring to do it. The artist works out his own formulas; the interest of science lies in the art of making science."

"Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature."

"An intelligent woman is a woman with whom one can be as stupid as one wants."

"The painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen."

"God made everything out of nothing. But the nothingness shows through."

"Everything simple is false. Everything complex is unusable."

"The very object of art, the principle of its artifice, is precisely to impart the impression of an ideal state in which the man who reaches it will be capable of spontaneously producing, with no effort or hesitation, a magnificent and wonderfully ordered expression of his nature and our destinies."

"This character out of my fantasy, whose author I became in the days of my partly literary, partly solitary or . . inward youth, has lived, apparently, since that faded time with a certain life — which his reticence, more than what he said, has persuaded a few readers to attribute to him. Teste was conceived — in a room where Auguste Comte spent his early years — at a period when I was drunk on my own will and subject to strange excesses of consciousness of my self. I was suffering from the acute ailment called precision. I tended toward the extreme of the reckless desire to understand, and I searched in myself for the critical points in my powers of attention."

"La bêtise n’est pas mon fort. J’ai vu beaucoup d’individus ; j’ai visité quelques nations ; j’ai pris ma part d’entreprises diverses sans les aimer ; j’ai mangé presque tous les jours ; j’ai touché à des femmes. Je revois maintenant quelques centaines de visages, deux ou trois grands spectacles, et peut-être la substance de vingt livres. Je n’ai pas retenu le meilleur ni le pire de ces choses : est resté ce qui l’a pu."

"My soul is nothing now but the dream dreamt by matter struggling with itself!"

"But what, Phaedrus, is the contrary of a dream if not some other dream?… A dream of vigilance and tension dreamt by Reason herself!—And what would such a Reason dream?—If a Reason were to dream—a Reason hard, erect, eyes armed, mouth closed, as though mistress of her lips—would not the dream she dreamt be what we see now—this world of exact forces and studied illusions?—A dream, a dream, but a dream interpenetrated with symmetries, all order, acts and sequences!"

"You have experienced nothing that was not both lawful and obscure, and thus conforming perfectly to the human machine. Are we not organized fantasy? And is not our living system functioning incoherency, disorder in action? Do not events, desires, ideas interchange within us in the most necessary and incomprehensible ways?"

"Reason, sometimes, seems to me to be the faculty our soul possesses of understanding nothing about our body!"

"[T]he soul of love is the invincible difference of lovers, while its subtle matter is the identity of their desires."

"What are mortals for?—Their business is to know. Know? And what is to know?—It is assuredly: not to be what one is.—And so here are humans raving and thinking, introducing into nature the principle of unlimited error, and myriads of marvels!"

"I cannot think that there exists more than one Sovereign Good."

"To construct oneself, to know oneself—are these two distinct acts or not?"

"What is most beautiful is of necessity tyrannical."

"What is there more mysterious than clarity?… What more capricious than the way in which light and shade are distributed over hours and over men?"

"Man can act only because he can ignore."

"And do not humans strive in a thousand ways to fill or to break the eternal silence of those infinite spaces that affright them?"

"Man discerns three great things in the All: he finds there his body, he finds there his soul—and then there is the rest of the world. Between these things there is an unceasing commerce, and sometimes even a confusion arises; but always after a certain time has elapsed, these three things come to be clearly distinguished from one another."

"It is therefore reasonable to think that the creations of man are made either with a view to his body, and that is the principle we call utility, or with a view to his soul, and that is what he seeks under the name of beauty. But, further, since he who constructs or creates has to deal with the rest of the world and with the movement of nature, which both tend perpetually to dissolve, corrupt or upset what he makes, he must recognize and seek to communicate to his works a third principle, that expresses the resistance he wishes them to offer to their destiny, which is to perish. So he seeks solidity or lastingness."

"Nay, who knows, Phaedrus, if the efforts of humans in their search for God, the observances, the prayers they essay, their obstinate will to discover the most efficacious… who knows if mortals will not finally discover a certitude—or an incertitude—stable and in exact conformity with their nature, if not with the very nature of God?"

"The greatest liberty is born of the greatest rigor."

"Most people in reasoning, dear Phaedrus, use notions that not only are "ready-made," but have actually been made by nobody. No one is responsible for them, and so they serve everyone badly."

"Man's deepest glances are those that go out to the void. They converge beyond the All."

"Now, of all acts the most complete is that of constructing. A work demands love, meditation, obedience to your finest thought, the invention of laws by your soul, and many other things that it draws miraculously from your own self, which did not suspect that it possessed them. This work proceeds from the most intimate center of your existence, and yet it is distinct from yourself."

"But still less should the gold of rich men lazily sleep its heavy sleep in the urns and gloom of treasuries. This so weighty metal, when it becomes the associate of a fancy, assumes the most active virtues of the mind. It has her restless nature. Its essence is to vanish. It changes into all things, without being itself changed. It raises blocks of stone, pierces mountains, diverts rivers, opens the gates of fortresses and the most secret hearts; it enchains men; it dresses, it undresses women with an almost miraculous promptitude. It is truly the most abstract agent that exists, next to thought. But thought exchanges and envelops images only, whereas gold incites and promotes the transmutations of all real things into one another; itself remaining incorruptible, and passing untainted through all hands."

"Ce toit tranquille, où marchent des colombes, Entre les pins palpite, entre les tombes; Midi le juste y compose de feux La mer, la mer, toujours recommencée O récompense après une pensée Qu'un long regard sur le calme des dieux!"

"Quel pur travail de fins éclairs consume Maint diamant d'imperceptible écume, Et quelle paix semble se concevoir! Quand sur l'abîme un soleil se repose, Ouvrages purs d'une éternelle cause, Le temps scintille et le songe est savoir."

"Beau ciel, vrai ciel, regarde-moi qui change! Après tant d'orgueil, après tant d'étrange Oisiveté, mais pleine de pouvoir, Je m'abandonne à ce brillant espace, Sur les maisons des morts mon ombre passe Qui m'apprivoise à son frêle mouvoir."

"Ici venu, l'avenir est paresse. L'insecte net gratte la sécheresse; Tout est brûlé, défait, reçu dans l'air A je ne sais quelle sévère essence . . . La vie est vaste, étant ivre d'absence, Et l'amertume est douce, et l'esprit clair."

"Allez! Tout fuit! Ma présence est poreuse, La sainte impatience meurt aussi!"

"Le vent se lève! . . . il faut tenter de vivre! L'air immense ouvre et referme mon livre, La vague en poudre ose jaillir des rocs! Envolez-vous, pages tout éblouies! Rompez, vagues! Rompez d'eaux rejouies Ce toit tranquille où picoraient des focs!"

"The “determinist” swears that if we knew everything we should also be able to deduce and foretell the conduct of every man in every circumstance, and that is obvious enough. But the expression “know everything” means nothing."

"A really free mind is scarcely attached to its opinions. If the mind cannot help giving birth to … emotions and affections which at first appear to be inseparable from them, it reacts against these intimate phenomena it experiences against its will."

"Great things are accomplished by men who are not conscious of the impotence of man. Such insensitiveness is precious. But we must admit that criminals are not unlike our heroes in this respect."

"It is a sign of the times, and not a very good sign, that these days it is necessary—and not only necessary but urgent—to interest minds in the fate of Mind, that is to say, in their own fate."

"Since everything that lives is obliged to expend and receive life, there is an exchange of modifications between the living creature and its environment. And yet, once that vital necessity is satisfied, our species—a positively strange species—thinks it must create for itself other needs and tasks besides that of preserving life. … Whatever may be the origin or cause of this curious deviation, the human species is engaged in an immense adventure, an adventure whose objective and end it does not know. … The same senses, the same muscles, the same limbs—more, the same types of signs, the same instruments of exchange, the same languages, the same modes of logic—enter into the most indispensable acts of our lives, as they figure into the most gratuitous. ... In short, man has not two sets of tools, he has only one, and this one set must serve him for the preservation of his life and his physiological rhythm, and expend itself at other times on illusions and on the labours of our great adventure. ... The same muscles and nerves produce walking as well as dancing, exactly as our linguistic faculty enables us to express our needs and ideas, while the same words and forms can be combined to produce works of poetry. A single mechanism is employed in both cases for two entirely different purposes."

"There is a value called “mind” as there is a value oil, wheat, or gold. … One can invest in that value, one can “follow” it as they say on the stock exchange; one can watch its fluctuations in I know not what price list which is the world’s general opinion of it. … All these rising and falling values constitute the great market of human affairs. And of these the unfortunate value mind does not stop falling."

"The commerce of minds was necessarily the first commerce in the world, … since before bartering things one must barter signs, and it is necessary therefore that signs be instituted. There is no market or exchange without language. The first instrument of all commerce is language."

"Freedom of mind and mind itself have been most fully developed in regions where trade developed at the same time. In all ages, without exception, every intense production of art, ideas, and spiritual values has occurred in some locality where a remarkable degree of economic activity was also manifest."

"I said that to invite minds to concern themselves with Mind and its destiny was a sign and symptom of the times. Would that idea have occurred to me, had not a whole body of impressions been sufficiently significant and powerful to reflect themselves in me, and for that reflection to become action? And that action, which consists of expressing it in your presence, would not perhaps have been accomplished had I not felt that my impressions were those of many other people, that the sensation of a diminution of mind, of a menace to culture, of a twilight of the most pure gods was a sensation which imposed itself with increasing strength on all those who are capable of feeling something in the order of superior values of which we are speaking."

"That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false."

"God created man, and finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a female companion so that he might feel his solitude more acutely."

"The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best."

"Politeness is organized indifference."

"Politics is the art of stopping people from minding their own business."

"Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them."

"The being filled with wonder is lovely, like a flower."

"In the Beginning was the Fable."

"What's loftiest in the mind can only live through growth."

"Is not to meditate to deepen oneself in Order?"

"Pascal lui-même n'a pas manqué de s'y tromper, qui traita de cet art avec superbe, et le réduisait à la vanité de poursuivre laborieusement la ressemblance de choses dont la vue d'elles-mêmes est sans intérêt, ce qui prouve qu'il ne savait pas regarder, c'est-à-dire oublier les noms des choses que l'on voit."

"If the state is strong, it crushes us. If it is weak, we perish."

"A work is never completed except by some accident such as weariness, satisfaction, the need to deliver, or death: for, in relation to who or what is making it, it can only be one stage in a series of inner transformations."

"Poe is the only impeccable writer. He was never mistaken."

"Do you realize that people don't know how to read Kafka simply because they want to decipher him? Instead of letting themselves be carried away by his unequaled imagination, they look for allegories — and come up with nothing but clichés: life is absurd (or it is not absurd), God is beyond reach (or within reach), etc. You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself."

"A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality."

"The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually being forgotten by man and thus the novelists' discoveries, however old they may be, will never cease to astonish."

"Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring — it was peace."

"Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel; it is its morality. The morality that stands against the ineradicable human habit of judging instantly, ceaselessly, and everyone; of judging before, and in the absence of, understanding. From the view­point of the novel’s wisdom, that fervid readiness to judge is the most detestable stupidity, the most pernicious evil."

"True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude toward those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it."

"Optimism is the opium of the people."

"Nothing is more repugnant to me than brotherly feelings grounded in the common baseness people see in one another."

"Žádné pocínání není samo o sobe dohré ani zlé. Teprve jeho místo v rádu ciní je dobrým ci zlým."

"No great movement designed to change the world can bear to be laughed at or belittled. Mockery is a rust that corrodes all it touches."

"It is 1971, and Mirek says: The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

"The bloody massacre in Bangladesh quickly covered over the memory of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the assassination of Allende drowned out the groans of Bangladesh, the war in the Sinai Desert made people forget Allende, the Cambodian massacre made people forget Sinai, and so on and so forth until ultimately everyone lets everything be forgotten. In times when history still moved slowly, events were few and far between and easily committed to memory. They formed a commonly accepted backdrop for thrilling scenes of adventure in private life. Nowadays, history moves at a brisk clip. A historical event, though soon forgotten, sparkles the morning after with the dew of novelty. No longer a backdrop, it is now the adventure itself, an adventure enacted before the backdrop of the commonly accepted banality of private life."

"People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past. They are fighting for access to the laboratories where photographs are retouched and biographies and histories rewritten."

"The proliferation of mass graphomania among politicians, cab drivers, women on the delivery table, mistresses, murderers, criminals, prostitutes, police chiefs, doctors, and patients proves to me that every individual without exception bears a potential writer within himself and that all mankind has every right to rush out into the streets with a cry of "We are all writers!" The reason is that everyone has trouble accepting the fact that he will disappear unheard of and unnoticed in an indifferent universe, and everyone wants to make himself into a universe of words before it's too late. Once the writer in every individual comes to life (and that time is not far off), we are in for an age of universal deafness and lack of understanding."

"The first step in liquidating a people," said Hubl, "is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long the nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world around it will forget even faster."

"...[O]f a world that rests essentially on the nonexistence of return, [...] everything is pardoned in advance and therefore everything cynically permitted."

"In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia."

"In the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body."

"And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?"

"We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come."

"Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love."

"To love someone out of compassion means not really to love."

"A person who longs to leave the place where he lives is an unhappy person."

"He had spent seven years of his life with Tereza, and now he realised that those years were more attractive in retrospect than they were when he was living them."

"For there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes."

"Necessity, weight, and value are three concepts inextricably bound: only necessity is heavy, and only what is heavy has value."

"When we ignore the body, we are more easily victimized by it."

"But is not an event in fact more significant and noteworthy the greater the number of fortuities necessary to bring it about?"

"Chance and chance alone has a message for us... Only chance can speak to us."

"Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of great distress."

"If a love is to be unforgettable, fortuities must immediately start fluttering down to it like birds to Francis of Assisi's shoulders."

"It was the call of all those fortuities... which gave her the courage to leave home and change her fate."

"It is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty."

"For the first few seconds, she was afraid he would throw her out because of the crude noises she was making, but then he put his arms around her. She was grateful to him for ignoring her rumbles, and she kissed him passionately, her eyes misting."

"Early in the novel [Anna Karenina], Anna meets Vronsky in curious circumstances: they are at the railway station when someone is run over by a train. At the end of the novel, Anna throws herself under a train. This symmetrical composition — the same motif appears at the beginning and the end — may seem quite “novelistic” to you, and I am willing to agree, but only on condition that you refrain from reading such notions as “fictive,” “fabricated,” and “untrue to life” into the word “novelistic.” Because human lives are composed in precisely such a fashion. They are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurrence (Beethoven’s music, death under a train) into a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of the individual’s life. Anna could have chosen another way to take her life. But the motif of death and the railway station, unforgettably bound to the birth of love, enticed her in her hour of despair with its dark beauty. Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress. It is wrong, then, to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences. … But it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty."

"Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect some day to suffer vertigo."

"No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves."

"Dreaming is not merely an act of communication; it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself."

"But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave."

"Physical love is unthinkable without violence."

""Why don't you ever use your strength on me?" she said. "Because love means renouncing strength," said Franz softly."

"Love is a battle," said Marie-Claude, still smiling. "And I plan to go on fighting. To the end."

"The goals we pursue are always veiled. A girl who longs for marriage longs for something she knows nothing about. The boy who hankers after fame has no idea what fame is. The thing that gives our every move its meaning is always totally unknown to us."

"The moment love is born: the woman cannot resist the voice calling forth her terrified soul; the man cannot resist the woman whose soul thus responds to his voice."

"What is unique about the "I" hides itself exactly in what is unimaginable about a person. All we are able to imagine is what makes everyone like everyone else, what people have in common. The individual "I" is what differs from the common stock, that is, what cannot be guessed at or calculated, what must be unveiled, uncovered, conquered."

"The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful."

"Love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory."

"Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost."

"Love is our freedom."

"When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object. In the realm of kitsch, the dictatorship of the heart reigns supreme."

"Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch."

"Sabina’s initial inner revolt against Communism was aesthetic rather than ethical in character. What repelled her was not nearly so much the ugliness of the Communist world (ruined castles transformed into cow sheds) as the mask of beauty it tried to wear — in other words, Communist kitsch."

"Whenever a single political movement corners power, we find ourselves in the realm of totalitarian kitsch. When I say “totalitarian,” what I mean is that everything that infringes on kitsch must be banished for life: every display of individualism (because a deviation from the collective is a spit in the eye of the smiling brotherhood); every doubt (because anyone who starts doubting details will end by doubting life itself); all irony (because in the realm of kitsch everything must be taken quite seriously); and the mother who abandons her family or the man who prefers men to women, thereby calling into question the holy decree “Be fruitful and multiply.”"

"We can regard the gulag as a septic tank used by totalitarian kitsch to dispose of its refuse."

"In the realm of totalitarian kitsch, all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions. It follows, then, that the true opponent of totalitarian kitsch is the person who asks questions. A question is like a knife that slices through the stage backdrop and gives us a look at what lies hidden behind it."

"What makes a leftist a leftist is not this or that theory but his ability to integrate any theory into the kitsch called the Grand March."

"Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion."

"The fact that until recently the word “shit” appeared in print as s— has nothing to do with moral considerations. You can’t claim that shit is immoral, after all! The objection to shit is a metaphysical one. The daily defecation session is daily proof of the unacceptability of Creation. … The aesthetic ideal of the categorical agreement with being is a world in which shit is denied and everyone acts as though it did not exist. This aesthetic ideal is called kitsch. … Kitsch is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and the figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence."

"Any new possibility that existence acquires, even the least likely, transforms everything about existence."

"I can't shake off the idea that after death you keep being alive. That to be dead is to live an endless nightmare."

"This is the real and the only reason for friendship: to provide a mirror so the other person can contemplate his image from the past, which, without the eternal blah-blah of memories between pals, would long ago have disappeared."

"It is always that way: between the moment he meets her again and the moment he recognizes her for the woman he loves, he has some distance to go."

"How could she feel nostalgia when he was right in front of her? How can you suffer from the absence of a person who is present?"

"You can suffer nostalgia in the presence of the beloved if you glimpse a future where the beloved is no more."

"The eye... the point where a person's identity is concentrated."

"You can't measure the mutual affection of two human beings by the number of words they exchange."

"Today we're all alike, all of us bound together by our shared apathy toward work. That very apathy has become a passion. The one great collective passion of our time."

"Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's very beautiful. But what would they nourish their intimate talk with? However contemptible the world may be, they still need it to be able to talk together."

"No love can survive muteness."

"Pain doesn't listen to reason, it has its own reason, which is not reasonable."

"He felt as if she no longer existed for him, had gone off somewhere, into some other life where, if he should meet her, he would no longer recognize her."

"As you live out your desolation, you can be either unhappy or happy. Having that choice is what constitutes your freedom."

"Since the insignificance of all things is our lot, we should not bear it as an affliction but learn to enjoy it."

"She said: "I get scared when my eye blinks. Scared that during that second when my gaze is switched off, a snake or a rat or another man could slip into your place.""

"(For Milan Kundera, "the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting". Are we losing this battle?) NG: One of the most truthful and profound insights ever made."

"Kundera sees writers and artists as vital witnesses of the twentieth century as an age marked by tyranny, saying: 'People regard those days as an era of political trials, persecutions, forbidden books and legalised murder. But we who remember must bear witness; it was not only an epoch of terror, but also an epoch of lyricism, ruled hand in hand by the hangman and the poet.'"

"To remember, if my Latin is correct, actually means to put the parts together. So that implies there are ways of losing parts. Kundera talks about this aspect of storytelling, too. In fact, he says that history, which is another kind of story, is often deliberately falsified in order to make a people forget who they are or who they were. He calls that "the method of organizing forgetting.""

"I particularly like the works of Milan Kundera such as The Unbearable Lightness of Being. His observations on human nature are more penetrating than those of Solzhenitsyn."

"He writes about his prick too much. Excuse me, boys. (What do you mean by that?) I happen to like The Book of Laughter and Forgetting very much. But this last book (The Unbearable Lightness of Being), it's really, it's as though he's been consumed by Western concerns. I think it's a corrupt book, I really do. I mean I really read it with great hopes because I really liked Laughter and Forgetting, I thought it was great. But I'm so disgusted. I mean who the fuck does he think he is? It's not that I don't think that a person can write about sexual obsession. I think there's not much more interesting than that in a way. I'm all for it. But it's so egocentrical and false, admiring her so much for this idiotic loyalty. (At the same time he's trying to use sex as a political metaphor.) Yeah, but so obviously. But I still like the other book."

"As all the perfumes of the vanished day Rise from the earth still moistened with the dew So from my chastened soul beneath thy ray Old love is born anew."

"Great artists have no country."

"Je ne puis;—malgré moi l'infini me tourmente."

"The apartments of the rich are cabinets of curiosities: a conglomeration of classical antiquity, gothic, renaissance; Louis XIII... Something from every century but our own, a predicament that has arisen in no other period... so that we seem to be subsisting on the ruins of the past, as if the end of the world were near."

"For us, a sorrowful generation consumed by visions and insulted by his angelic sloth, Musset is fourteen times worse! O the tedious tales and proverbs! O his Nuits! His Rolla, Namouna, La Coupe. It’s all so French, which is to say unbearable to the nth degree; French, but not Parisian. Another work by that odious genius who inspired Rabelais, Voltaire and Jean La Fontaine, with notes by M. Taine! How vernal, Musset’s mind! And how delightful, his love! Like paint on enamel, his dense poetry! We will savor French poetry endlessly, in France. Every grocer’s son can reel off something Rollaesque, every seminarian has five hundred rhymes hidden in his notebook. At fifteen, these passionate impulses give boys boners; at sixteen, they’ve already resolved to recite their lines with feeling; at eighteen, even seventeen, every schoolboy who can write a Rolla, does—and they all do! Some may even still die from it. Musset couldn’t do anything: there were visions behind the gauze curtains: he closed his eyes. French, half-dead, dragged from tavern to schooldesk, the beautiful corpse has died, and, ever since, we needn’t waste our time trying to rouse him with our abominations!"

"Je l'ai trop aimé pour ne le point haïr!"

"Derrière un voile, invisible et présente, J'étais de ce grand corps l'âme toute-puissante."

"Ce que je sais le mieux, c'est mon commencement."

"Vous êtes empereur, Seigneur, et vous pleurez!"

"Mon unique espérance est dans mon désespoir."

"Jamais on ne vaincra les Romains que dans Rome."

"Un bienfait reproché tient toujours lieu d’offense."

"Tout m'afflige et me nuit, et conspire à me nuire."

"Ariane, ma sœur, de quel amour blessée,Vous mourûtes aux bords où vous fûtes laissée."

"C'est toi qui l'as nommé."

"Ce n'est plus une ardeur dans mes veines cachée: C'est Vénus tout entière à sa proie attachée."

"L'innocence enfin n'a rien à redouter."

"Ainsi que la vertu, le crime a ses dégrés; Et jamais on n'a vu la timide innocence Passer subitement à l'extrême licence."

"Pour réparer des ans l'irréparable outrage."

"Aux petits des oiseaux il donne leur pâture, Et sa bonté s’étend sur toute la nature."

"Hâtons-nous aujourd'hui de jouir de la vie. Qui sait si nous serons demain?"

"Dieu des Juifs, tu l'emportes!"

"To joke in the face of danger is the supreme politeness, a delicate refusal to cast oneself as a tragic hero."

"Valvert: Your … your nose is … errr … Your nose … is very large! Cyrano: [gravely] Very. Valvert: [laughs] Ha! Cyrano: [imperturbable] Is that all? Valvert: But … Cyrano: Ah, no, young man, that is not enough! You might have said, dear me, there are a thousand things … varying the tone … For instance … Here you are: — Aggressive: "I, monsieur, if I had such a nose, nothing would serve but I must cut it off!" Amicable: "It must be in your way while drinking; you ought to have a special beaker made!" Descriptive: "It is a crag! … a peak! … a promontory! … A promontory, did I say? … It is a peninsula!" Inquisitive: "What may the office be of that oblong receptacle? Is it an inkhorn or a scissor-case?" Mincing: "Do you so dote on birds, you have, fond as a father, been at pains to fit the little darlings with a roost?" Blunt: "Tell me, monsieur, you, when you smoke, is it possible you blow the vapor through your nose without a neighbor crying "The chimney is afire!"?" Anxious: "Go with caution, I beseech, lest your head, dragged over by that weight, should drag you over!" Tender: "Have a little sun-shade made for it! It might get freckled!" Learned: "None but the beast, monsieur, mentioned by Aristophanes, the hippocampelephantocamelos, can have borne beneath his forehead so much cartilage and bone!" Off-Hand: "What, comrade, is that sort of peg in style? Capital to hang one's hat upon!" Emphatic: No wind can hope, O lordly nose, to give the whole of you a cold, but the Nor-Wester!" Dramatic: "It is the Red Sea when it bleeds!" Admiring: "What a sign for a perfumer's shop!" Lyric: "Art thou a Triton, and is that thy conch?" Simple: "A monument! When is admission free?" Deferent: "Suffer, monsieur, that I should pay you my respects: That is what I call possessing a house of your own!" Rustic: "Hi, boys! Call that a nose? You don't gull me! It's either a prize parrot or a stunted gourd!" Military: "Level against the cavalry!" Practical: "Will you put up for raffle? Indubitably, sir, it will be the feature of the game!" And finally in parody of weeping Pyramus: "Behold, behold the nose that traitorously destroyed the beauty of its master! and is blushing for the same!" — That, my dear sir, or something not unlike, is what you could have said to me, had you the smallest leaven of letters or wit; but of wit, O most pitiable of objects made by God, you never had a rudiment, and of letters, you have just those that are needed to spell "fool!" — But, had it been otherwise, and had you been possessed of the fertile fancy requisite to shower upon me, here, in this noble company, that volley of sprightly pleasentries, still should you not have delivered yourself of so much as a quarter of the tenth part of the beginning of the first … For I let off these good things at myself, and with sufficient zest, but do not suffer another to let them off at me!""

"Valvert: Villain, clod-poll, flat-foot, refuse of the earth! Cyrano: [taking off his hat and bowing as if the Vicomte had been introducing himself] Ah? … And mine, Cyrano-Savinien-Hercule of Bergerac! Valvert: [exasperated] Buffoon! Cyrano: [giving a sudden cry, as if seized with a cramp] Aï! … Valvert: [who had started toward the back, turning] What is he saying now? Cyrano: [screwing his face as if in pain] It must have leave to stir … it has a cramp! It is bad for it to be kept still so long! Valvert: What is the matter? Cyrano: My rapier prickles like a foot asleep! Valvert: [drawing] So be it! Cyrano: I shall give you a charming little hurt! Valvert: [contemptous] Poet! Cyrano: Yes, a poet, … and, to such an extent, that while we fence, I will, hop!, extempore, compose you a ballade! Valvert: A ballade? Cyrano: I fear you do not know what that is. Valvert: But … Cyrano: [as if saying a lesson] The ballade is composed of three stanzas of eight lines each … Valvert: [stamps with his feet] Oh! Cyrano: [continuing] And an envoi of four. Valvert: You … Cyrano: I will with the same breath fight you and compose one. And, at the last line, I will hit you. Valvert: Indeed you will not! Cyrano: No? … [Declaiming] Ballade of the duel which in Burgundy house Monsieur de Bergerac fought with a jackanape … Valvert: And what is that, if you please? Cyrano: That is the title. [ … ] Cyrano: [closing his eyes a second] Wait. I am settling upon the rhymes. There. I have them. [in declaiming, he suits the action to the word] Of my broad felt made lighter, I cast my mantle broad, And stand, poet and fighter, To do and to record. I bow, I draw my sword … En garde! With steel and wit I play you at first abord … At the last line, I hit! [They begin fencing] You should have been politer; Where had you best be gored? The left side or the right — ah? Or next your azure cord? Or where the spleen is stored? Or in the stomach pit? Come we to quick accord … At the last line, I hit! You falter, you turn whiter? You do so to afford Your foe a rhyme in "iter"? … You thrust at me — I ward — And balance is restored. Laridon! Look to your spit! … No, you shall not be floored Before my cue to hit! [He announces solemnly] Envoi Prince, call upon the Lord! … I skirmish … feint a bit … I lunge! … I keep my word! [The Vicomte staggers, Cyrano bows.] At the last line, I hit!"

"Call no one. Leave me not; When you come back, I should be gone for aye."

"Live, for I love you!"

"No, In fairy tales When to the ill-starred Prince the lady says "I love you!" all his ugliness fades fast — But I remain the same, up to the last!"

"You blessed my life! Never on me had rested woman's love. My mother even could not find me fair: I had no sister; and, when grown a man, I feared the mistress who would mock at me. But I have had your friendship — grace to you A woman's charm has passed across my path."

"I loved but once, yet twice I lose my love!"

"Rhymer, brawler, and musician, Famed for his lunar expedition, And the unnumbered duels he fought, — And lover also, — by interposition! — Here lies Hercule Savinien De Cyrano de Bergerac, Who was everything, yet was naught. I cry you pardon, but I may not stay; See, the moon-ray that comes to call me hence! I would not bid you mourn less faithfully That good, brave Christian: I would only ask That when my body shall be cold in clay You wear those sable mourning weeds for two, And mourn awhile for me, in mourning him."

"What say you? It is useless? Ay, I know But who fights ever hoping for success? I fought for lost cause, and for fruitless quest! You there, who are you! — You are thousands! Ah! I know you now, old enemies of mine! Falsehood! Have at you! Ha! and Compromise! Prejudice, Treachery! … Surrender, I? Parley? No, never! You too, Folly, — you? I know that you will lay me low at last; Let be! Yet I fall fighting, fighting still!"

"You strip from me the laurel and the rose! Take all! Despite you there is yet one thing I hold against you all, and when, tonight, I enter Christ's fair courts, and, lowly bowed, Sweep with doffed casque the heavens' threshold blue, One thing is left, that, void of stain or smutch, I bear away despite you … My panache."

"Malebranche dirait qu’il n’y a plus une âme: Nous pensons humblement qu’il reste encor des cœurs."

"Sans doute Je peux apprendre à coqueriquer: je glougloute."

"Et sonnant d’avance sa victoire, Mon chant jaillit si net, si fier, si peremptoire Que l’horizon, saisi d'un rose tremblement, M’obéit."

"Je recule Ébloui de me voir moi même tout vermeil Et d’avoir, moi, le coq, fait élever le soleil."

"I suspect that the playwright Edmond Rostand accurately portrays his ability as a swordsman; Cyrano was something of a legend in his own time."

"Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction."

"The prospects of revolution seem therefore quite restricted. For can a revolution avoid war? It is, however, on this feeble chance that we must stake everything or abandon all hope. An advanced country will not encounter, in the case of revolution, the difficulties which in backward Russia served as a base for the barbarous regime of Stalin. But a war of any scope will give rise to others as formidable."

"I have sometimes told myself that if only there were a notice on church doors forbidding entry to anyone with an income above a certain figure, and a low one, I would be converted at once."

"Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity."

"Wrongly or rightly you think that I have a right to the name of Christian. I assure you that when in speaking of my childhood and youth I use the words vocation, obedience, spirit of poverty, purity, acceptance, love of one's neighbor, and other expressions of the same kind, I am giving them the exact signification they have for me now. Yet I was brought up by my parents and my brother in a complete agnosticism, and I never made the slightest effort to depart from it; I never had the slightest desire to do so, quite rightly, I think. In spite of that, ever since my birth, so to speak, not one of my faults, not one of my imperfections really had the excuse of ignorance. I shall have to answer for everything on that day when the Lamb shall come in anger. You can take my word for it too that Greece, Egypt, ancient India, and ancient China, the beauty of the world, the pure and authentic reflections of this beauty in art and science, what I have seen of the inner recesses of human hearts where religious belief is unknown, all these things have done as much as the visibly Christian ones to deliver me into Christ's hands as his captive. I think I might even say more. The love of these things that are outside visible Christianity keeps me outside the Church... But it also seems to me that when one speaks to you of unbelievers who are in affliction and accept their affliction as a part of the order of the world, it does not impress you in the same way as if it were a question of Christians and of submission to the will of God. Yet it is the same thing."

"Concern for the symbol has completely disappeared from our science. And yet, if one were to give oneself the trouble, one could easily find, in certain parts at least of contemporary mathematics... symbols as clear, as beautiful, and as full of spiritual meaning as that of the circle and mediation. From modern thought to ancient wisdom the path would be short and direct, if one cared to take it."

"La culture est un instrument manié par des professeurs pour fabriquer des professeurs qui à leur tour fabriqueront des professeurs."

"Love is not consolation, it is light."

"Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith; and in this sense atheism is a purification. I have to be an atheist with that part of myself which is not made for God. Among those in whom the supernatural part of themselves has not been awakened, the atheists are right and the believers wrong."

"That is why St. John of the Cross calls faith a night. With those who have received a Christian education, the lower parts of the soul become attached to these mysteries when they have no right at all to do so. That is why such people need a purification of which St. John of the Cross describes the stages. Atheism and incredulity constitute an equivalent of such a purification."

"Whenever one tries to suppress doubt, there is tyranny."

"There are two atheisms of which one is a purification of the notion of God."

"The number 2 thought of by one man cannot be added to the number 2 thought of by another man so as to make up the number 4."

"Maurras, with perfect logic, is an atheist. The Cardinal [Richelieu], in postulating something whose whole reality is confined to this world as an absolute value, committed the sin of idolatry. … The real sin of idolatry is always committed on behalf of something similar to the State."

"Our patriotism comes straight from the Romans. This is why French children are encouraged to seek inspiration for it in Corneille. It is a pagan virtue, if these two words are compatible. The word pagan, when applied to Rome, early possesses the significance charged with horror which the early Christian controversialists gave it. The Romans really were an atheistic and idolatrous people; not idolatrous with regard to images made of stone or bronze, but idolatrous with regard to themselves. It is this idolatry of self which they have bequeathed to us in the form of patriotism."

"There is a reality outside the world, that is to say, outside space and time, outside man's mental universe, outside any sphere whatsoever that is accessible to human faculties. Corresponding to this reality, at the centre of the human heart, is the longing for an absolute good, a longing which is always there and is never appeased by any object in this world. Another terrestrial manifestation of this reality lies in the absurd and insoluble contradictions which are always the terminus of human thought when it moves exclusively in this world. Just as the reality of this world is the sole foundation of facts, so that other reality is the sole foundation of good. That reality is the unique source of all the good that can exist in this world: that is to say, all beauty, all truth, all justice, all legitimacy, all order, and all human behaviour that is mindful of obligations. Those minds whose attention and love are turned towards that reality are the sole intermediary through which good can descend from there and come among men. Although it is beyond the reach of any human faculties, man has the power of turning his attention and love towards it. Nothing can ever justify the assumption that any man, whoever he may be, has been deprived of this power. It is a power which is only real in this world in so far as it is exercised. The sole condition for exercising it is consent. This act of consent may be expressed, or it may not be, even tacitly; it may not be clearly conscious, although it has really taken place in the soul. Very often it is verbally expressed although it has not in fact taken place. But whether expressed or not, the one condition suffices: that it shall in fact have taken place. To anyone who does actually consent to directing his attention and love beyond the world, towards the reality that exists outside the reach of all human faculties, it is given to succeed in doing so. In that case, sooner or later, there descends upon him a part of the good, which shines through him upon all that surrounds him."

"The combination of these two facts — the longing in the depth of the heart for absolute good, and the power, though only latent, of directing attention and love to a reality beyond the world and of receiving good from it — constitutes a link which attaches every man without exception to that other reality. Whoever recognizes that reality recognizes also that link. Because of it, he holds every human being without any exception as something sacred to which he is bound to show respect. This is the only possible motive for universal respect towards all human beings. Whatever formulation of belief or disbelief a man may choose to make, if his heart inclines him to feel this respect, then he in fact also recognizes a reality other than this world's reality. Whoever in fact does not feel this respect is alien to that other reality also."

"It is impossible to feel equal respect for things that are in fact unequal unless the respect is given to something that is identical in all of them. Men are unequal in all their relations with the things of this world, without exception. The only thing that is identical in all men is the presence of a link with the reality outside the world. All human beings are absolutely identical in so far as they can be thought of as consisting of a centre, which is an unquenchable desire for good, surrounded by an accretion of psychical and bodily matter."

"If anyone possesses this faculty, then his attention is in reality directed beyond the world, whether he is aware of it or not. The link which attaches the human being to the reality outside the world is, like the reality itself, beyond the reach of human faculties. The respect that it makes us feel as soon as it is recognized cannot be shown to us by evidence or testimony."

"The respect inspired by the link between man and the reality alien to this world can make itself evident to that part of man which belongs to the reality of this world. The reality of this world is necessity. The part of man which is in this world is the part which is in bondage to necessity and subject to the misery of need. The one possibility of indirect expression of respect for the human being is offered by men's needs, the needs of the soul and of the body, in this world."

"Anyone whose attention and love are really directed towards the reality outside the world recognizes at the same time that he is bound, both in public and private life, by the single and permanent obligation to remedy, according to his responsibilities and to the extent of his power, all the privations of soul and body which are liable to destroy or damage the earthly life of any human being whatsoever. This obligation cannot legitimately be held to be limited by the insufficiency of power or the nature of the responsibilities until everything possible has been done to explain the necessity of the limitation to those who will suffer by it; the explanation must be completely truthful and must be such as to make it possible for them to acknowledge the necessity. No combination of circumstances ever cancels this obligation. If there are circumstances which seem to cancel it as regards a certain man or category of men, they impose it in fact all the more imperatively. The thought of this obligation is present to all men, but in very different forms and in very varying degrees of clarity. Some men are more and some are less inclined to accept — or to refuse — it as their rule of conduct."

"The proportions of good and evil in any society depend partly upon the proportion of consent to that of refusal and partly upon the distribution of power between those who consent and those who refuse. If any power of any kind is in the hands of a man who has not given total, sincere, and enlightened consent to this obligation such power is misplaced. If a man has willfully refused to consent, then it is in itself a criminal activity for him to exercise any function, major or minor, public or private, which gives him control over people's lives. All those who, with knowledge of his mind, have acquiesced in his exercise of the function are accessories to the crime. Any State whose whole official doctrine constitutes an incitement to this crime is itself wholly criminal. It can retain no trace of legitimacy. Any State whose official doctrine is not primarily directed against this crime in all its forms is lacking in full legitimacy. Any legal system which contains no provisions against this crime is without the essence of legality. Any legal system which provides against some forms of this crime but not others is without the full character of legality. Any government whose members commit this crime, or authorize it in their subordinates, has betrayed its function."

"It is the aim of public life to arrange that all forms of power are entrusted, so far as possible, to men who effectively consent to be bound by the obligation towards all human beings which lies upon everyone, and who understand the obligation. Law is the quality of the permanent provisions for making this aim effective."

"The needs of a human being are sacred. Their satisfaction cannot be subordinated either to reasons of state, or to any consideration of money, nationality, race, or colour, or to the moral or other value attributed to the human being in question, or to any consideration whatsoever. There is no legitimate limit to the satisfaction of the needs of a human being except as imposed by necessity and by the needs of other human beings. The limit is only legitimate if the needs of all human beings receive an equal degree of attention."

"The needs of the soul can for the most part be listed in pairs of opposites which balance and complete one another. The human soul has need of equality and of hierarchy. Equality is the public recognition, effectively expressed in institutions and manners, of the principle that an equal degree of attention is due to the needs of all human beings. Hierarchy is the scale of responsibilities. Since attention is inclined to direct itself upwards and remain fixed, special provisions are necessary to ensure the effective compatibility of equality and hierarchy."

"The human soul has need of consented obedience and of liberty. Consented obedience is what one concedes to an authority because one judges it to be legitimate. It is not possible in relation to a political power established by conquest or coup d'etat nor to an economic power based upon money. Liberty is the power of choice within the latitude left between the direct constraint of natural forces and the authority accepted as legitimate. The latitude should be sufficiently wide for liberty to be more than a fiction, but it should include only what is innocent and should never be wide enough to permit certain kinds of crime."

"The human soul has need of truth and of freedom of expression. The need for truth requires that intellectual culture should be universally accessible, and that it should be able to be acquired in an environment neither physically remote nor psychologically alien."

"In order to be exercised, the intelligence requires to be free to express itself without control by any authority. There must therefore be a domain of pure intellectual research, separate but accessible to all, where no authority intervenes. The human soul has need of some solitude and privacy and also of some social life. The human soul has need of both personal property and ."

"Whenever a human being, through the commission of a crime, has become exiled from good, he needs to be reintegrated with it through suffering. The suffering should be inflicted with the aim of bringing the soul to recognize freely some day that its infliction was just. This reintegration with the good is what punishment is. Every man who is innocent, or who has finally expiated guilt, needs to be recognized as honourable to the same extent as anyone else."

"The human soul has need of disciplined participation in a common task of public value, and it has need of personal initiative within this participation. The human soul has need of security and also of risk. The fear of violence or of hunger or of any other extreme evil is a sickness of the soul. The boredom produced by a complete absence of risk is also a sickness of the soul."

"Croire qu’on s’élève parce qu’en gardant les mêmes bas penchants (exemple : désir de l’emporter sur autrui) on leur a donné des objets élevés. On s’élèverait au contraire en attachant à des objets bas des penchants élevés."

"When we are the victims of illusion we do not feel it to be an illusion but a reality. It is the same perhaps with evil. Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty."

"Alexander is to a peasant proprietor what Don Juan is to a happily married husband."

"The simultaneous existence of opposite virtues in the soul — like pincers to catch hold of God."

"L’action est l’aiguille indicatrice de la balance. Il ne faut pas toucher à l’aiguille, mais aux poids."

"We should have with each person the relationship of one conception of the universe to another conception of the universe, and not to a part of the universe."

"Capitalism has brought about the emancipation of collective humanity with respect to nature. But this collective humanity has itself taken on with respect to the individual the oppressive function formerly exercised by nature."

"The thought of being under absolute compulsion, the plaything of another, is unendurable for a human being. Hence, if every way of escape from the constraint is taken from him, there is nothing left for him to do but to persuade himself that he does the things he is forced to do willingly, that is to say, to substitute devotion for obedience. … It is by this twist that slavery debases the soul: this devotion is in fact based on a lie, since the reasons for it cannot bear investigation. … Moreover, the master is deceived too by the fallacy of devotion."

"Conformity is an imitation of grace."

"We must wish either for that which actually exists or for that which cannot in any way exist — or, still better, for both. That which is and that which cannot be are both outside the realm of becoming."

"It is not religion but revolution which is the opium of the people."

"Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating."

"This world is the closed door. It is a barrier. And at the same time it is the way through. Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but it is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link. By putting all our desire for good into a thing, we make that thing a condition of our existence. But we do not, on that account, make of it a good. Merely to exist is not enough for us. The essence of created things is to be intermediaries. They are intermediaries leading from one to the other, and there is no end to this."

"One of the most exquisite pleasures of human love — to serve the loved one without his knowing it — is only possible, as regards the love of God, through atheism."

"In order to obey God, one must receive his commands. How did it happen that I received them in adolescence, while I was professing atheism? To believe that the desire for good is always fulfilled — that is faith, and whoever has it is not an atheist."

"No human being escapes the necessity of conceiving some good outside himself towards which his thought turns in a movement of desire, supplication, and hope. consequently, the only choice is between worshipping the true God or an idol. Every atheist is an idolater — unless he is worshipping the true God in his impersonal aspect. The majority of the pious are idolaters."

"If people were told: what makes carnal desire imperious in you is not its pure carnal element. It is the fact that you put into it the essential part of yourself—the need for Unity, the need for God — they wouldn’t believe it. To them it seems obvious that the quality of imperious need belongs to the carnal desire as such. In the same way it seems obvious to the miser that the quality of desirability belongs to gold as such, and not to its exchange value."

"The eulogies of my intelligence are positively intended to evade the question "Is what she says true?""

"There is nothing that comes closer to true humility than the intelligence. It is impossible to feel pride in one's intelligence at the moment when one really and truly exercises it."

"At the bottom of the heart of every human being, from earliest infancy until the tomb, there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all experience of crimes committed, suffered, and witnessed, that good and not evil will be done to him. It is this above all that is sacred in every human being. The good is the only source of the sacred. There is nothing sacred except the good and what pertains to it."

"Gregorian chant, Romanesque architecture, the Iliad, the invention of geometry were not, for the people through whom they were brought into being and made available to us, occasions for the manifestation of personality."

"It is precisely those artists and writers who are most inclined to think of their art as the manifestation of their personality who are in fact the most in bondage to public taste."

"A modern factory reaches perhaps almost the limit of horror. Everybody in it is constantly harassed and kept on edge by the interference of extraneous wills while the soul is left in cold and desolate misery. What man needs is silence and warmth; what he is given is an icy pandemonium. Physical labour may be painful, but it is not degrading as such. It is not art; it is not science; it is something else, possessing an exactly equal value with art and science, for it provides an equal opportunity to reach the impersonal stage of attention."

"The notion of rights is linked with the notion of sharing out, of exchange, of measured quantity. It has a commercial flavor, essentially evocative of legal claims and arguments. Rights are always asserted in a tone of contention; and when this tone is adopted, it must rely upon force in the background, or else it will be laughed at."

"If you say to someone who has ears to hear: "What you are doing to me is not just," you may touch and awaken at its source the spirit of attention and love. But it is not the same with words like, "I have the right..." or "you have no right to..." They evoke a latent war and awaken the spirit of contention."

"If a young girl is being forced into a brothel she will not talk about her rights. In such a situation the word would sound ludicrously inadequate."

"The full expression of personality depends upon its being inflated by social prestige; it is a social privilege."

"Just as a vagrant accused of stealing a carrot from a field stands before a comfortably seated judge who keeps up an elegant flow of queries, comments and witticisms while the accused is unable to stammer a word, so truth stands before an intelligence which is concerned with the elegant manipulation of opinions."

"If a captive mind is unaware of being in prison, it is living in error. If it has recognized the fact, even for the tenth of a second, and then quickly forgotten it in order to avoid suffering, it is living in falsehood. Men of the most brilliant intelligence can be born, live and die in error and falsehood. In them, intelligence is neither a good, nor even an asset. The difference between more or less intelligent men is like the difference between criminals condemned to life imprisonment in smaller or larger cells. The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like a condemned man who is proud of his large cell."

"To listen to someone is to put oneself in his place while he is speaking. To put oneself in the place of someone whose soul is corroded by affliction, or in near danger of it, is to annihilate oneself. It is more difficult than suicide would be for a happy child. Therefore the afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard. That is why there is no hope for the vagrant as he stands before the magistrate. Even if, through his stammerings, he should utter a cry to pierce the soul, neither the magistrate nor the public will hear it. His cry is mute. And the afflicted are nearly always equally deaf to one another; and each of them, constrained by the general indifference, strives by means of self-delusion or forgetfulness to become deaf to his own self."

"It is because of my wretchedness that I am "I." It is on account of the wretchedness of the universe that, in a sense, God is "I" (that is to say a person)."

"Those who keep the masses of men in subjection by exercising force and cruelty deprive them at once of two vital foods, liberty and obedience; for it is no longer within the power of such masses to accord their inner consent to the authority to which they are subjected. Those who encourage a state of things in which the hope of gain is the principal motive take away from men their obedience, for consent which is its essence is not something which can be sold."

"By committing a crime, a man places himself, of his own accord, outside the chain of eternal obligations which bind every human being to every other one. Punishment alone can weld him back again; fully so, if accompanied by consent on his part; otherwise only partially so. Just as the only way of showing respect for somebody suffering from hunger is to give him something to eat, so the only way of showing respect for somebody who has placed himself outside the law is to reinstate him inside the law by subjecting him to the punishment ordained by law. The need for punishment is not satisfied where, as is generally the case, the penal code is merely a method of exercising pressure through fear."

"Liberty, taking the word in its concrete sense, consists in the ability to choose."

"The Great Beast is the only object of idolatry, the only ersatz of God, the only imitation of something which is infinitely far from me and which is I myself."

"The collective is the object of all idolatry, this it is which chains us to the earth. In the case of avarice: gold is of the social order. In the case of ambition: power is of the social order. Science and art are full of the social element also. And love? Love is more or less of an exception: that is why we can go to God through love, not through avarice and ambition."

"A society like the Church, which claims to be Divine is perhaps more dangerous on account of the ersatz good which it contains then on account of the evil which sullies it. Something of the social labelled divine: an intoxicating mixture which carries with it every sort of license. Devil disguised."

"Conscience is deceived by the social. Our supplementary energy (imaginative) is to a great extent taken up with the social. It has to be detached from it. That is the most difficult of detachments."

"It is only by entering the transcendental, the supernatural, the authentically spiritual order that man rises above the social. Until then, whatever he may do, the social is transcendent in relation to him."

"Rome is the Great Beast of atheism and materialism, adoring nothing but itself. Israel is the Great Beast of religion. Neither one nor the other is likable. The Great Beast is always repulsive."

"The state of conformity is an imitation of grace. By a strange mystery — which is connected with the power of the social element — a profession can confer on quite ordinary men in their exercise of it, virtues which, if they were extended to all circumstances of life, would make of them heroes or saints. But the power of the social element makes these virtues natural. Accordingly they need a compensation."

"But if Germany, thanks to Hitler and his successors, were to enslave the European nations and destroy most of the treasures of their past, future historians would certainly pronounce that she had civilized Europe."

"A Pharisee is someone who is virtuous out of obedience to the Great Beast."

"The common run of moralists complain that man is moved by his private self-interest: would to heaven it were so! Private interest is a self-centered principle of action, but at the same time restricted, reasonable and incapable of giving rise to unlimited evils. Whereas, on the other hand, the law of all activities governing social life, except in the case of primitive communities, is that here one sacrifices human life — in himself and in others — to things which are only means to a better way of living. This sacrifice takes on various forms, but it all comes back to the question of power. Power, by definition, is only a means; or to put it better, to possess a power is simply to possess means of action which exceed the very limited force that a single individual has at his disposal. But power-seeking, owing to its essential incapacity to seize hold of its object, rules out all consideration of an end, and finally comes, through an inevitable reversal, to take the place of all ends. It is this reversal of the relationship between means and end, it is this fundamental folly that accounts for all that is senseless and bloody right through history. Human history is simply the history of the servitude which makes men — oppressed and oppressors alike — the plaything of the instruments of domination they themselves have manufactured, and thus reduces living humanity to being the chattel of inanimate chattels."

"La force, c'est ce qui fait de quiconque lui est soumis une chose. Quand elle s'exerce jusqu'au bout, elle fait de l'homme une chose au sens le plus littéral, car elle en fait un cadavre."

"La force qui tue est une forme sommaire, grossière de la force. Combien plus variée en ses procédés, combien plus surprenante en ses effets, est l'autre force, celle qui ne tue pas; c'est-à-dire celle qui ne tue pas encore."

"Du pouvoir de transformer un homme en chose en le faisant mourir procède un autre pouvoir, et bien autrement prodigieux, celui de faire une chose d'un homme qui reste vivant."

"Une âme ... n'est pas faite pour habiter une chose ; quand elle y est contrainte, il n’est plus rien en elle qui ne souffre violence."

"Si tous sont destinés en naissant à souffrir la violence, c'est là une vérité à laquelle l'empire des circonstances ferme les esprits des hommes."

"Le prestige, qui constitue la force plus qu'aux trois quarts, est fait avant tout de la superbe indifférence du fort pour les faibles, indifférence si contagieuse qu'elle se communique à ceux qui en sont l'objet."

"Once the experience of war makes visible the possibility of death that lies locked up in each moment, our thoughts cannot travel from one day to the next without meeting death's face. The mind is then strung up to a pitch it can stand for only a short time; but each new dawn introduces the same necessity; and days piled on days make years. On each one of these days the soul suffers violence. Regularly, each morning, the soul castrates itself of aspiration, for thought cannot journey through time without meeting death on the way. Thus war effaces all conceptions of purpose or goal, including even its own "war aims." It effaces the very notion of war's being brought to an end. Consequently, nobody does anything to bring this end about. In the presence of an armed enemy, what hand can relinquish its weapon? The mind ought to find a way out, but the mind has lost all capacity to so much as look outward. The mind is completely absorbed in doing itself violence. Always in human life, whether war or slavery is in question, intolerable sufferings continue, as it were, by the force of their own specific gravity, and so look to the outsider as though they deprived the sufferer of the resources which might serve to extricate him."

"Celui qui ignore à quel point la fortune variable et la nécessité tiennent toute âme humaine sous leur dépendance ne peut pas regarder comme des semblables ni aimer comme soi-même ceux que le hasard a séparés de lui par un abîme. La diversité des contraintes qui pèsent sur les hommes fait naître l'illusion qu'il y a parmi eux des espèces distinctes qui ne peuvent communiquer."

"Il n'est possible d'aimer et d'être juste que si l'on connaît l'empire de la force et si l'on sait ne pas le respecter."

"Moreover, nothing is so rare as to see misfortune fairly portrayed; the tendency is either to treat the unfortunate person as though catastrophe were his natural vocation, or to ignore the effects of misfortune on the soul, to assume, that is, that the soul can suffer and remain unmarked by it, can fail, in fact, to be recast in misfortune's image."

"I also am other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness."

"Truth is sought not because it is truth but because it is good."

"We can know only one thing about God — that he is what we are not. Our wretchedness alone is an image of this. The more we contemplate it, the more we contemplate him."

"The recognition of human wretchedness is difficult for whoever is rich and powerful because he is almost invincibly led to believe that he is something. It is equally difficult for the man in miserable circumstances because he is almost invincibly led to believe that the rich and powerful man is something."

"There is no area in our minds reserved for superstition, such as the Greeks had in their mythology; and superstition, under cover of an abstract vocabulary, has revenged itself by invading the entire realm of thought. Our science is like a store filled with the most subtle intellectual devices for solving the most complex problems, and yet we are almost incapable of applying the elementary principles of rational thought. In every sphere, we seem to have lost the very elements of intelligence: the ideas of limit, measure, degree, proportion, relation, comparison, contingency, interdependence, interrelation of means and ends. To keep to the social level, our political universe is peopled exclusively by myths and monsters; all it contains is absolutes and abstract entities. This is illustrated by all the words of our political and social vocabulary: nation, security, capitalism, communism, fascism, order, authority, property, democracy. We never use them in phrases such as: There is democracy to the extent that... or: There is capitalism in so far as... The use of expressions like "to the extent that" is beyond our intellectual capacity. Each of these words seems to represent for us an absolute reality, unaffected by conditions, or an absolute objective, independent of methods of action, or an absolute evil; and at the same time we make all these words mean, successively or simultaneously, anything whatsoever. Our lives are lived, in actual fact, among changing, varying realities, subject to the casual play of external necessities, and modifying themselves according to specific conditions within specific limits; and yet we act and strive and sacrifice ourselves and others by reference to fixed and isolated abstractions which cannot possibly be related either to one another or to any concrete facts. In this so-called age of technicians, the only battles we know how to fight are battles against windmills."

""A man thinks he is dying for his country," said Anatole France, "but he is dying for a few industrialists." But even that is saying too much. What one dies for is not even so substantial and tangible as an industrialist."

"What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war; petrol is much more likely than wheat to be a cause of international conflict. Thus when war is waged it is for the purpose of safeguarding or increasing one's capacity to make war. International politics are wholly involved in this vicious cycle. What is called national prestige consists in behaving always in such a way as to demoralize other nations by giving them the impression that, if it comes to war, one would certainly defeat them. What is called national security is an imaginary state of affairs in which one would retain the capacity to make war while depriving all other countries of it. It amounts to this, that a self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war. But why is it so essential to be able to make war? No one knows, any more than the Trojans knew why it was necessary for them to keep Helen. That is why the good intentions of peace-loving statesman are so ineffectual. If the countries were divided by a real opposition of interests, it would be possible to arrive at a satisfactory compromise. But when economic and political interests have no meaning apart from war, how can they be peacefully reconciled?"

"The aim is to replace economic oligarchies by the State, which has a will-to-power of its own and is quite as little concerned with the public good; and a will-to-power, moreover, which is not economic but military and therefore much more dangerous to any good folk who have a taste for staying alive. And on the bourgeois side what on earth is the sense of objecting to State control in economic affairs if one accepts private monopolies which have all the economic and technical disadvantages of State monopolies and possibly some others as well?"

"The struggle between the opponents and defenders of capitalism is a struggle between innovators who do not know what innovation to make and conservatives who do not know what to conserve."

"The necessity for power is obvious, because life cannot be lived without order; but the allocation of power is arbitrary because all men are alike, or very nearly. Yet power must not seem to be arbitrarily allocated, because it will not then be recognized as power. Therefore prestige, which is illusion, is of the very essence of power."

"An imaginary perfection is automatically at the same level as I who imagine it — neither higher nor lower."

"It is not in a person's nature to desire what he already has. Desire is a tendency, the start of a movement toward something, toward a point from which one is absent. If, at the very outset, this movement doubles back on itself toward its point of departure, a person turns round and round like a squirrel in a cage or a prisoner in a condemned cell. Constant turning soon produces revulsion. All workers, especially though not exclusively those who work under inhumane conditions, are easily the victims of revulsion, exhaustion and disgust and the strongest are often the worst affected."

"We must leave on one side the beliefs which fill up voids and sweeten what is bitter. The belief in immortality. The belief in the utility of sin: etiam peccata. The belief in the providential ordering of events — in short the "consolations" which are ordinarily sought in religion."

"We should desire neither the immortality nor the death of any human being, whoever he may be, with whom we have to do."

"The miser deprives himself of his treasure because of his desire for it."

"If we love God while thinking that he does not exist, he will manifest his existence."

"If we want a love which will protect the soul from wounds we must love something other than God."

"God's love for us is not the reason for which we should love him. God's love for us is the reason for us to love ourselves."

"To desire friendship is a great fault. Friendship should be a gratuitous joy like those afforded by art or life. We must refuse it so that we may be worthy to receive it; it is of the order of grace."

"Désirer échapper à la solitude est une lâcheté. L'amitié ne se recherche pas, ne se rêve pas, ne se désire pas ; elle s'exerce (c'est une vertu)."

"Meditation on the chance which led to the meeting of my mother and father is even more salutary than meditation on death."

"Stars and blossoming fruit-trees: utter permanence and extreme fragility give an equal sense of eternity."

"The most important part of education — to teach the meaning of to know (in the scientific sense)."

"Humility consists of knowing that in this world the whole soul, not only what we term the ego in its totality, but also the supernatural part of the soul, which is God present in it, is subject to time and to the vicissitudes of change. There must be absolutely acceptance of the possibility that everything material in us should be destroyed. But we must simultaneously accept and repudiate the possibility that the supernatural part of the soul should disappear."

"The key to a Christian conception of studies is the realization that prayer consists of attention. It is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable toward God. The quality of the attention counts for much in the quality of the prayer. Warmth of heart cannot make up for it."

"Although people seem to be unaware of it today, the development of the faculty of attention forms the real object and almost the sole interest of studies."

"School children and students who love God should never say: "For my part I like mathematics"; "I like French"; "I like Greek." They should learn to like all these subjects, because all of them develop that faculty of attention which, directed toward God, is the very substance of prayer."

"Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object; it means holding in our minds, within reach of this thought, but on a lower level and not in contact with it, the diverse knowledge we have acquired which we are forced to make use of."

"Above all our thought should be empty, waiting, not seeking anything, but ready to receive in its naked truth the object that is to penetrate it. All wrong translations, all absurdities in geometry problems, all clumsiness of style, and all faulty connection of ideas in compositions and essays, all such things are due to the fact that thought has seized upon some idea too hastily, and being thus prematurely blocked, is not open to the truth."

"We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by waiting for them. Man cannot discover them by his own powers, and if he sets out to seek for them he will find in their place counterfeits of which he will be unable to discern falsity."

"The capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have this capacity do not possess it. Warmth of heart, impulsiveness, pity are not enough."

"Paradoxical as it may seem, a Latin prose or a geometry problem, even though they are done wrong, may be of a great service one day, provided we devote the right kind of effort to them. Should the occasion arise, they can one day make us better able to give someone in affliction exactly the help required to save him, at the supreme moment of his need."

"When I read the catechism of the Council of Trent, it seems as though I had nothing in common with the religion there set forth."

"The Hebrews took for their idol, not something made of metal or wood, but a race, a nation, something just as earthly. Their religion is essentially inseparable from such idolatry, because of the notion of the "chosen people"."

"Every time that a man has, with a pure heart, called upon Osiris, Dionysus, Buddha, the Tao, etc., the Son of God has answered him by sending the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit has acted upon his soul, not by inciting him to abandon his religious tradition, but by bestowing upon him light — and in the best of cases the fullness of light — in the heart of that same religious tradition. … It is, therefore, useless to send out missions to prevail upon the peoples of Asia, Africa or Oceania to enter the Church."

"Besides, it is written that the tree shall be known by its fruits. The Church has borne too many evil fruits for there not to have been some mistake at the beginning. Europe has been spiritually uprooted, cut off from that antiquity in which all the elements of our civilization have their origin; and she has gone about uprooting the other continents from the sixteenth century onwards. Missionary zeal has not Christianized Africa, Asia and Oceania, but has brought these territories under the cold, cruel and destructive domination of the white race, which has trodden down everything. It would be strange, indeed, that the word of Christ should have produced such results if it had been properly understood."

"One could count on one's fingers the number of scientists in the entire world who have a general idea of the history and development of their own particular science; there is not one who is really competent as regards sciences other than his own. As science forms an indivisible whole, one may say that there are no longer, strictly speaking, any scientists, but only drudges doing scientific work. . . ."

"I too have a growing inner certainty that there is a deposit of pure gold in me which ought to be passed on. The trouble is that I am more and more convinced by my experience and observation of my contemporaries that there is no one to receive it."

"Any madness in us gains from being expressed, because in this way one gives a human form to what separates us from humanity."

"We have seen that language is something precious because it allows us to express ourselves; but it is fatal when one allows oneself to be completely led astray by it, because then it prevents one from expressing oneself. Language is the source of the prejudices and haste which Descartes thought of as the sources of error."

"The materialists say, it is by means of a series of straight lines more or less perfect that one imagines the perfect straight line as an ideal limit. That is right, but the progression in itself necessarily contains what is infinite; it is in relation to the perfect straight line that one can say that such and such a straight line is less twisted than some other. ... Either one conceives the infinite or one does not conceive at all."

"The first thing that we know about ourselves is our imperfection."

""Science affirms that ..." Science is voiceless; it is the scientists who talk."

"My purpose here is to denounce an idea which seems to be dangerous and false. … Revolutionary trade unionists and orthodox communists are at one in considering everything that is purely theoretical as bourgeois. … The culture of a socialist society would be a synthesis of theory and practice; but to synthesize is not the same as to confuse together; it is only contraries that can be synthesized. … Marx’s principal glory is to have rescued the study of societies not only from Utopianism but also and at the same time from empiricism. … Humanity cannot progress by importing into theoretical study the processes of blind routine and haphazard experiment by which production has so long been dominated. … The true relation between theory and application only appears when theoretical research has been purged of all empiricism."

"Respectable scientists like de Broglie himself accept wave mechanics because it confers coherence and unity upon the experimental findings of contemporary science, and in spite of the astonishing changes it implies in connection with ideas of causality, time, and space, but it is because of these changes that it wins favor with the public. The great popular success of Einstein was the same thing. The public drinks in and swallows eagerly everything that tends to dispossess the intelligence in favor of some technique; it can hardly wait to abdicate from intelligence and reason and from everything that makes man responsible for his destiny."

"Men … ask nothing better, it would seem, than to leave their destiny, their life, and all their thoughts in the hands of a few men with a gift for the exclusive manipulation of this or that technique."

"There are necessities and impossibilities in reality which do not obtain in fiction, any more than the law of gravity to which we are subject controls what is represented in a picture. … It is the same with pure good; for a necessity as strong as gravity condemns man to evil and forbids him any good, or only within the narrowest limits and laboriously obtained and soiled and adulterated with evil. … The simplicity which makes the fictional good something insipid and unable to hold the attention becomes, in the real good, an unfathomable marvel."

"During the last quarter of a century all the authority associated with the function of spiritual guidance … has seeped down into the lowest publications. … Between a poem by Valéry and an advertisement for a beauty cream promising a rich marriage to anyone who used it there was at no point a breach of continuity. So as a result of literature’s spiritual usurpation a beauty cream advertisement possessed, in the eyes of little village girls, the authority that was formerly attached to the words of priests."

"When, as a result of what was called Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, the priests had in fact almost entirely lost this function of guidance. Their place was taken by writers and scientists. In both cases it is equally absurd. Mathematics, physics, and biology are as remote from spiritual guidance as the art of arranging words. When that function is usurped by literature and science it proves there is no longer any spiritual life."

"It is not only in literature that fiction generates immorality. It does it also in life itself. For the substance of our life is almost exclusively composed of fiction. We fictionalize our future, and, unless we are heroically devoted to truth, we fictionalize our past, refashioning it to our taste. We do not study other people; we invent what they are thinking, saying, and doing. Reality provides us with some raw material, just as novelists often take a theme from a news item, but we envelop it in a fog in which, as in all fiction, values are reversed, so that evil is attractive and good is tedious."

"The essential characteristic of the first half of the twentieth century is the growing weakness, and almost the disappearance, of the idea of value."

"Dadaism and surrealism … represented the intoxication of total license, the intoxication in which the mind wallows when it has made a clean sweep of value and surrendered to the immediate. The good is the pole towards which the human spirit is necessarily oriented, not only in action but in every effort, including the effort of pure intelligence. The surrealists have set up non-oriented thought as a model; they have chosen the total absence of value as their supreme value. Men have always been intoxicated by license, which is why, throughout history, towns have been sacked. But there has not always been a literary equivalent for the sacking of towns. Surrealism is such an equivalent."

"Such words as spontaneity, sincerity, gratuitousness, richness, enrichment — words which imply an almost total indifference to contrasts of value — have come more often from their [the surrealists’] pens than words which contain a reference to good and evil. Moreover, this latter class of words has become degraded, especially those which refer to the good, as Valéry remarked some years ago. Words like virtue, nobility, honor, honesty, generosity, have become almost impossible to use or else they have acquired bastard meanings; language is no longer equipped for legitimately praising a man’s character."

"In a general way, the literature of the twentieth century is essentially psychological; and psychology consists of describing states of the soul by displaying them all on the same plane, without any discrimination of value, as though good and evil were external to them, as though the effort toward the good could be absent at any moment from the thought of any man."

"There is a certain kind of morality which is even more alien to good and evil than amorality is."

"In the interest of public security it would be advisable that this person be distanced from Le Puy, where she has never ceased to preach revolt."

"In her relatively short life, Simone Weil … created a body of work whose intellectual scope and acuity are remindful of religious thinkers such as Blaise Pascal or Søren Kierkegaard. Since no book by Simone Weil appeared in her lifetime and only a few of her writings were intended for publication, a noteworthy reception of her ideas took place only when selections of her notes, diaries and fragments began to be published posthumously after World War II."

"Simone Weil's intellectual and existential search encompassed several of the major religious and sapiential traditions. Since her religiosity was imbued by Greek thought, Gnosticism, Chinese wisdom, Christian mysticism, and Indian philosophy, it is not surprising that scholars have been especially attentive to her perceptive elaborations on the universal truths informing these — at first sight — hardly compatible spiritual world views."

"Given that only the religion of pervasive kenosis can be truly universal, no single historical individual can exhaust its fullness by virtue of his redemptive acts, and no religious institution can grasp and articulate its meaning by means of dogmatic or doctrinal teachings. In the last resort, it is in the name of religious universalism that Simone Weil calls for a reversion of historical Christianity to its origins as a religion of kenosis."

"Simone Weil, je le sais encore maintenant, est le seul grand esprit de notre temps et je souhaite que ceux qui le reconnaissent en reçoivent assez de modestie pour ne pas essayer d’annexer ce témoignage bouleversant. Pour moi, je serais comblé si l’on pouvait dire qu’à ma place, et avec les faibles moyens don’t je dispose, j’ai servi à faire connaitre et à répandre son oeuvre dont on n’a pas encore mesuré tout le retentissement."

"In the last years of her life she worried that all beliefs, even religious ones, risk idolatry. Her insistence upon "a convention ratified by God" is another example of the thoroughly personal knowledge of God that she sought, and one gathers, believed herself to have attained. She seemed persuaded that under the auspices of the Church such personal knowledge simply does not come about; on the contrary, parishioners turn idolatrous and mistake a ritual, a habit, and alas, a social custom (to go to church on Sunday, say) for such a convention."

"Weil’s critique of modern science consists of two parts, the first directed at classical (Newtonian) science, the latter at contemporary science, especially twentieth-century relativity and quantum mechanics. In each, Weil detects a species of thoughtlessness or failure of that prayerful attention that marks all genuine study and intellectual accomplishment."

"The assimilation of algebra by mathematical physics, a process spanning the eighteenth and extending into the nineteenth century, exacerbates the implicit thoughtlessness of classical science by subordinating scientific cognition to symbolic formulae increasingly devoid of insight. In the process, a genuine encounter with natural necessity, revelatory of divine providence, is lost to science, Symbolic or algebraic physics represents the collectivization of thought, as it were, where science itself is rendered a technique of knowledge production and thought ceases to be the activity of any responsible individual. … This process reaches its logical conclusion in twentieth-century physics, where science is reduced finally to a form of symbolic manipulation the only value of which is predictive success and technological domination of nature."

"The reader of her work finds himself confronted by a difficult, violent and complex personality; and the assistance of those who have the advantage of long discussions or correspondence with her, especially those who are under the peculiar conditions of the last five years her life, will be a permanent value in the future. … After reading Waiting on God and the present volume I saw that I must try to understand the personality of the author and that the reading and re-reading of all her work was necessary for this slow process of understanding. In trying to understand her, we must not be distracted … by considering how far, and at what points we agree or disagree. We must simply expose ourselves to the personality of a woman of genius, of a kind of genius akin to that of the saints. … I cannot conceive of anybody's agreeing with all of her views, or of not disagreeing violently with some of them. But agreement and rejection are secondary: what matters is to make contact with a great soul. Simone Weil was one who might have become a saint. Like some who have achieved this state, she had greater obstacles to overcome, as well as greater strength for overcoming them, then the rest of us. A potential saint can be a very difficult person. I suspect that Simone Weil could be at times insupportable. One is struck, here and there, by contrast between an almost superhuman humility and what appears to be an almost outrageous arrogance."

"In her political thinking she appears as a strong critic of both Right and Left; at the same time or truly a lover of order and hierarchy than even most of those who call themselves Conservative, and more truly a lover of the people than most of those who call themselves Socialist."

"What she cared about was human souls. Her study of human rights and human obligations exposes the falsity of some of the verbiage still current which was used during the war to serve as a moral stimulant."

"I went through a stage in life when I was thirty-two or thirty-three years old-when I was very fascinated by the writings of Simone Weil. In the end, her religious philosophy left me where I was. But I felt that there was something there that answered to a need that I felt, my "need for roots" that she wrote about so marvelously. I couldn't find the same solution."

"Her life is almost a perfect blending of the Comic and the Terrible, which two things may be opposite sides of the same coin. In my own experience, everything funny I have ever written is more terrible than it is funny, or only funny because it is terrible, or only terrible because it is funny. Well Simone Weil's is the most comical life I have ever read about, and the most truly tragic and terrible."

"By saying Simone Weil's life was both comic and terrible I am not trying to reduce it, but mean to be paying her the highest tribute I can, short of calling her a saint, which I don't believe she was. Possibly I have a higher opinion of the comic and terrible than you do. To my way of thinking it includes her great courage and to call her anything less would be to see here as merely ordinary. Of course, I can only say, as you point out, this is what I see, not, this is what she is — which only God knows."

"I have read everything by Simone Weil, who was an extraordinary woman gifted with immense empathy. But I think she might have profited from some better advice. She was not physically strong and yet, in order to directly experience the struggle of working people, she undertook factory work that was too much for her. And she also fought in the Spanish Civil War and, being somewhat clumsy, stepped into a pail of boiling oil, was severely burned, and went to Portugal to recuperate. Later, she would eat only the minimal portion of food she believed was available to people in occupied France—a few potatoes perhaps. She had been diagnosed with tuberculosis, and this may well have contributed to her death. (Then, as you see her, she is more of an inspiration than a model.) EP: Yes, an inspiration. She could not have been a model for me because I am neither a genius nor a mystic and, like Leonora, I had children I loved and for whom I was responsible, so that even if I had discovered a vocation of this sort in myself, I could not have lived such an extreme life."

"[By 1939] Simone Weil had developed a social and political awareness which it took the war and the German occupation to awaken in many French intellectuals and beyond which many of them, including Sartre, have never progressed."

"Simone Weil was one of the most remarkable women of the twentieth, or indeed of any other century. I have great sympathy for her, but sympathy is not necessarily congeniality. It would be easier to write of her if I liked what she had to say, which I strongly do not. …I think Simone Weil had both over- and under-equipped herself for the crisis which overwhelmed her — along, we forget, immersed in her tragedy, with all the rest of us. She was almost the perfectly typical passionate, revolutionary, intellectual woman — a frailer, even more highly strung Rosa Luxemburg. … She made up her own revolution out of her vitals, like a spider or silkworm. She could introject all the ill of the world into her own heart, but she could not project herself in sympathy to others. Her letters read like the more distraught signals of John of the Cross in the dark night."

"Although a few commentators have noted the influence of Simone Weil on the thought of Albert Camus, their relationship has never been fully explored … I shall examine several aspects of that influence in … Weil's critique of Marxism which Camus adopted in L'Homme Révolté… the conception of the rebel as an artisan which Camus also used in L'Homme Révolté, and … Weil's mysticism, to which Camus was reluctantly though definitely drawn. … I shall consider more fully the different conceptions of freedom and justice which appear in their writings and argue that their contributions to political thought here lay with their appreciation of the impulse in modern man to seek and impose absolute values. In this context, we shall see that Camus and Simone Weil provide different routes to individual authenticity and integrity in an absurd world."

"Most sins can be traced back to the social element. They spring from a thirst to appear and to dominate. It is not that Simone Weil rejects the social element as such; she knows that our environment, roots and traditions form bridges, metaxu between earth and heaven; what she repudiates is the totalitarian city — symbolized by the ‘Great Beast’ of Plato and the Beast of the Apocalypse — whose power and prestige usurp God’s place in the soul. Whether it shows itself under a conservative or a revolutionary aspect, whether it consists of adoring the present or the future city, social idolatry always tends to stifle and to replace the true mystic tradition. All the persecutions of prophets and saints are due to it; through it Antigone and Joan of Arc were condemned and Jesus Christ crucified. The social Beast offers man a substitute for religion which allows him to transcend his individuality without surrendering his self and so, at small cost, to dispense with God; a social imitation of the highest virtues is possible by which they are immediately degraded into pharisaism: "The pharisee is he who is virtuous out of obedience to the Great Beast.""

"Light for the spirit and nourishment for the soul, Simone Weil’s work does not have to be brought "up to date," since it emanates from that summit of being which overhangs all times and places. How could one put a date on a particular thought by Plato or Marcus Aurelius, a verse by Aeschylus, or the utterance of a Shakespearean hero ? The same is true, and in exemplary fashion, for Simone Weil. True light does not fade, and a true fountain need never be replenished. To speak of what is timeless is also to speak of what is universal. The undeserved privilege of presenting Simone Weil’s first book to the public has brought me countless favourable comments from the four corners of the globe. What strikes me most about these is that they come from individuals of such diverse backgrounds, social status, cultural milieu, etc, and that reading this work has left a deep impression on all their souls, as they found in it the revelation of an inner truth for which they had, up until then, been waiting in vain. At the twilight of a century whose accelerated history has led to the rise and fall of so many idols, this book increasingly appears like a message from eternity, addressed to eternal man, this "Nothingness capable of God," who is enslaved by gravity and liberated by grace."

"I knew her very well, I have had long discussions with her. For a period of time she was more or less in sympathy with our cause, but then she lost faith in the proletariat and in Marxism. It's possible that she will turn toward the left again."

"Ca va faire, je pense, 23 ans que tu as fait ton entrée dans le monde phénoménal pour le plus grand emmerdement des recteurs et des directrices."

"Sometimes, only one person is missing, and the whole world seems depopulated."

"O time, arrest your flight! and you, propitious hours, arrest your course! Let us savor the fleeting delights of our most beautiful days!"

"I say to this night: "Pass more slowly"; and the dawn will come to dispel the night."

"Let us love the passing hour, let us hurry up and enjoy our time."

"Love alone was left, as a great image of a dream that was erased."

"Limited in his nature, infinite in his desires, man is a fallen god who remembers the heavens."

"What is our life but a succession of preludes to that unknown song whose first solemn note is sounded by death?"

"Les utopies ne sont souvent que des verités prématurées."

"Experience is the only prophecy of wise men."

"The more I see of the representatives of the people, the more I admire my dogs."

"Si la grandeur du dessein, la petitesse des moyens, l'immensité du résultat sont les trois mesures du génie de l'homme, qui osera comparer humainement un grand homme de l'histoire moderne à Mahomet?"

"Never has a man set for himself, voluntarily or involuntarily, a more sublime aim, since this aim was super human; to subvert superstitions which had been imposed between man and his Creator, to render God unto man and man unto God; to restore the rational and sacred idea of divinity amidst the chaos of the material and disfigured gods of idolatry, then existing. Never has a man undertaken a work so far beyond human power with so feeble means, for he Muhammad had in the conception as well as in the execution of such a great design, no other instrument than himself and no other aid except a handful of men living in a corner of the desert. Finally, never has a man accomplished such a huge and lasting revolution in the world, because in less than two centuries after its appearance, Islam, reigned over the whole of Arabia, and conquered, in God's name, Persia, Khorasan, Transoxania, Western India, Syria, Egypt, Abyssinia, all the known continent of Northern Africa, numerous islands of the Mediterranean Sea, Spain and part of Gaul. If greatness of purpose, smallness of means, and astounding results are the three criteria of human genius, who could dare to compare any great man in modern history with Muhammad? The most famous men created arms, laws and empires only. They founded, if anything at all, no more than material powers which often crumbled away before their eyes. This man moved not only armies, legislations, empires, peoples and dynasties, but millions of men in one-third of the then inhabited world; and more than that, he moved the altars, the gods, the religions, the ideas, the beliefs and souls. . . his forbearance in victory, his ambition, which was entirely devoted to one idea and in no manner striving for an empire; his endless prayers, his mystic conversations with God, his death and his triumph after death; all these attest not to an imposture but to a firm conviction which gave him the power to restore a dogma. This dogma was twofold, the unity of God and the immateriality of God; the former telling what God is, the latter telling what God is not; the one overthrowing false gods with the sword, the other starting an idea with words. Philosopher, orator, apostle, legislator, warrior, conqueror of ideas, restorer of rational dogmas, of a cult without images; the founder of twenty terrestrial empires and of one spiritual empire, that is Muhammad. As regards all standards by which human greatness may be measured, we may well ask, is there any man greater than he?"

"Silence is the winding-sheet of the past: it is sometimes impious, often dangerous to raise it. But even when it is raised piously and lovingly, the first moment is a cruel one."

"My God! I have often regretted that I was born! I have often wished to fall back even into nothingness, rather than advance through so many falsehoods, so many sufferings, and so many successive losses, towards that loss of ourselves which we call death! Still, even in those moments of terrible faintheartedness, when despair overmasters reason, and when man forgets that life is a task imposed upon him to finish, I have always said to myself: "There are some things which I would regret not to have tasted — a mother's milk, a father's love, that relationship of heart and soul between brothers, household affections, joys, and even cares!" Our family is evidently our second self, more than self, existing before self, and surviving self with the better part of self. It is the image of the holy and loving unity of beings revealed by the small group of creatures who hold to one another, and made visible by feeling!"

"The very eagle, destined to soar so high and to see so far, begins his life in the fissures of the rocks, and in his early days only sees the arid and sometimes fetid borders of his eyry."

"My mother was convinced, and on this head I have retained her firm belief, that to kill animals for the purpose of feeding on their flesh is one of the most deplorable and shameful infirmities of the human state; that it is one of those curses cast upon man either by his fall, or by the obduracy of his own perversity. She believed, and I am of the same belief, that these habits of hard-heartedness towards the gentlest animals, our companions, our auxiliaries, our brethren in toil and even in affection here below; that these immolations, these sanguinary appetites, this sight of palpitating flesh, are calculated to brutalize the instincts of the heart and make them ferocious. She believed, and I am of the same belief, that this nurture, which is seemingly much more succulent and much more energetic, contains in itself active causes of irritation and putridity, which sour the blood and shorten the days of mankind. In support of these ideas of abstinence, she quoted the innumerable gentle and pious tribes of India who deny themselves all that has had life; and the strong and healthy races of the shepherds and even of the laboring classes of our fields."

"My mother took me to town with her, and made me pass, as if by accident, through the yard of a slaughter-house. I saw some men, their arms naked and besmeared with blood, knocking a bull in the head; others cutting the throats of calves and sheep, and separating their still heaving limbs. Streams of smoking gore ran along the pavement. An intense feeling of pity, mingled with horror, seized upon me. I asked to be led away quickly. The thought of these scenes, the necessary preliminaries of one of those dishes of meat which I had so often seen on the table, made me take a disgust to animal food and inspired me with a horror for butchers."

"Until the age of twelve, then, I only lived on bread, milk-food, vegetables, and fruit. My health was not less robust on this account, nor my growth less rapid, and it was to this diet, perhaps, that I was indebted for that purity of feature, that exquisite sensibility of feeling, and that serene gentleness of humor and character which I had preserved up to that period."

"The doctrine of the cynics is the Ideal reversed, the parody of physical and moral beauty, the crime of mind, the degradation of imagination. I could not take pleasure in it. There was too much enthusiasm within me to permit me to crawl through those sinks of the brain. My nature had wings. The dangers to which I was exposed were above, not below."

"The first romantics were seers without even really realizing it: their soul’s education began by accident: abandoned trains still smoking, occasionally taking to the tracks. Lamartine was a seer now and again, but strangling on old forms. Hugo, too pigheaded, certainly saw in his most recent works: Les Misérables is really a poem. I’ve got Les Chatiments with me; Stella gives some sense of Hugo’s vision. Too much Belmontet and Lamennais with their Jehovahs and colonnades, massive crumbling edifices."

"Lamartine, at the Hotel de Ville, in Paris, in 1848, produced an instantaneous effect that few orators have surpassed."

"Each time dawn appears, the mystery is there in its entirety."

"Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth."

"Man is head, chest and stomach. Each of these animals operates, more often than not, individually. I eat, I feel, I even, although rarely, think.... This jungle crawls and teems, is hungry, roars, gets angry, devours itself, and its cacophonic concert does not even stop when you are asleep."

"Truth is one, but error proliferates. Man tracks it down and cuts it up into little pieces hoping to turn it into grains of truth. But the ultimate atom will always essentially be an error, a miscalculation."

"Words are made for a certain exactness of thought, as tears are for a certain degree of pain. What is least distinct cannot be named; what is clearest is unutterable."

"It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content … it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble and from babble to confusion."

"Common experience is the gold reserve which confers an exchange value on the currency which words are; without this reserve of shared experiences, all our pronouncements are cheques drawn on insufficient funds."

"My observations are those of a beginner. As they are completely fresh in my mind and concern the first difficulties a beginner encounters, they may be more useful to beginners making their first ascents than treatises written by professionals. These are no doubt more methodical and complete, but are intelligible only after a little preliminary experience. The entire aim of these notes is to help the beginner acquire this preliminary experience a little faster."

"Alpinism is the art of climbing mountains by confronting the greatest dangers with the greatest prudence. Art is used here to mean the accomplishment of knowledge in action."

"You cannot always stay on the summits. You have to come down again . . ."

"So what’s the point? Only this: what is above knows what is below, what is below does not know what is above. While climbing, take note of all the difficulties along your path. During the descent, you will no longer see them, but you will know that they are there if you have observed carefully."

"There is an art to finding your way in the lower regions by the memory of what you have seen when you were higher up. When you can no longer see, you can at least still know. . ."

"It's better to act and to regret / Than to regret not to have acted"

"No bird can ever fly / like a heart can rise so high"

"A friendship that can be ended / didn't ever start"

"So you must always remember / that time ends the beauty"

"A man who knows neither how to travel nor how to keep a journal has put together this travel journal. But at the moment of signing he is suddenly afraid. So he casts the first stone. Here."

"No, I have already said it elsewhere. This earth has had all the exoticism washed out of it. If in a hundred years we have not established contact with some other planet (but we will), or, next best, with the earth's interior, humanity is finished. There is no longer a means of living, we explode, we go to war, we perpetrate evil of all sorts; we are, in a word, incapable of remaining any longer on this rind. We are in mortal pain; both from the dimensions as they now stand, and from the lack of any future dimension to which we can turn, now that our tour of the earth has been done to death. (These opinions, I know, are quite sufficient to have me looked down upon as a mind of the fourth order.)"

"It is almost an intellectual tradition to pay heed to the insane. In my case those that I most respect are the morons."

"A mind of a certain size can feel only exasperation toward a city. Nothing can drive me more fully into despair. The walls first of all, and even then all the rest is only so many horrid images of selfishness, mistrust, stupidity, and narrow-mindedness. No need to memorize the Napoleonic code. Just look at a city and you have it. Each time I come back from the country, just as I am starting to congratulate myself on my calmness, there breaks out a furor, a rage... And I come upon my mark, homo sapiens, the acquisitive wolf. Cities, architectures, how I loathe you! Great surfaces of vaults, vaults cemented into the earth, vaults set out in compartments, forming vaults to eat in, vaults for sex, vaults on the watch, ready to open fire. How sad, sad..."

"You can love a woman. To admire her is hard. You are not dealing with something important."

"In my night, I besiege my King. I rise up steadily and I wring his neck. He regathers his strength, I come back at him, and wring his neck another time. I shake him, shake him like an old prune tree, and his crown trembles on his head. But nevertheless, he is my King, I know it and he knows it, and it is quite certain that I am at his service."

"It is preferable not to travel with a dead man."

"I started publishing small poetry plaquettes. They were about 200 copies. Then I went up to 2 thousand and now I have reached 20 thousand. Last week a publisher suggested that I publish my books in a collection that runs 100,000 copies. I refused: what I want is to return to the 200 from the beginning."

"Henry Michaux has been very important for me, with his Voyage en Grande Garabagne. Michaux was considered a poet but I find his work absolutely narrative. He would have been a flash fiction author today."

"Les ondulations de ces montagnes infinies, que leurs couches de neige semblaient rendre écumantes, rappelaient à mon souvenir la surface d'une mer agitée. Si je me retournais vers l'ouest, l'Océan s'y développait dans sa majestueuse étendue, comme une continuation de ces sommets moutonneux. Où finissait la terre, où commençaient les flots, mon oeil le distinguait à peine.'Je me plongeais ainsi dans cette prestigieuse extase que donnent les hautes cimes, et cette fois, sans vertige, car je m'accoutumais enfin à ces sublimes contemplations. Mes regards éblouis se baignaient dans la transparente irradiation des rayons solaires, j'oubliais qui j'étais, où j'étais, pour vivre de la vie des elfes ou des sylphes, imaginaires habitants de la mythologie scandinave; je m'enivrais de la volupté des hauteurs, sans songer aux abîmes dans lesquels ma destinée allait me plonger avant peu."

"Mais aux grandes douleurs le ciel mêle incessamment les grandes joies, et il réservait au professeur Lidenbrock une satisfaction égale à ses désespérants ennuis."

"Les objets extérieurs ont une action réelle sur le cerveau. Qui s’enferme entre quatre murs finit par perdre la faculté d’associer les idées et les mots. Que de prisonniers cellulaires devenus imbéciles, sinon fous, par le défaut d’exercice des facultés pensantes."

"Je ne puis peindre mon désespoir; nul mot de la langue humaine ne rendrait mes sentiments. J’étais enterré vif, avec la perspective de mourir dans les tortures de la faim et de la soif."

"La science, mon garçon, est faite d’erreurs, mais d’erreurs qu’il est bon de commettre, car elles mènent peu à peu à la vérité."

"Le grand architecte de l'univers l'a construite on bons matériaux."

"Hunger, prolonged, is temporary madness! The brain is at work without its required food, and the most fantastic notions fill the mind. Hitherto I had never known what hunger really meant. I was likely to understand it now."

"L’homme est ainsi fait, que sa santé est un effet purement négatif; une fois le besoin de manger satisfait, on se figure difficilement les horreurs de la faim; il faut les éprouver, pour les comprendre."

"Et tant que son coeur bat, tant que sa chair palpite, je n'admets pas qu'un être doué de volonté laisse en lui place au désespoir."

"Or, quand un Américain a une idée, il cherche un second Américain qui la partage. Sont-ils trois, ils élisent un président et deux secrétaires. Quatre, ils nomment un archiviste, et le bureau fonctionne. Cinq, ils se convoquent en assemblée générale, et le club est constitué."

"Rien ne saurait étonner un Américain. On a souvent répété que le mot "impossible" n’était pas français; on s’est évidemment trompé de dictionnaire. En Amérique, tout est facile, tout est simple, et quant aux difficultés mécaniques, elles sont mortes avant d’être nées. Entre le projet Barbicane et sa réalisation, pas un véritable Yankee ne se fût permis d’entrevoir l’apparence d’une difficulté. Chose dite, chose faite."

"L’astre des nuits, par sa proximité relative et le spectacle rapidement renouvelé de ses phases diverses, a tout d’abord partagé avec le Soleil l’attention des habitants de la Terre."

"Restait en dernier lieu la classe superstitieuse des ignorants; ceux-lá ne se contentent pas d'ignorer, ils savent ce qui n'est pas."

"Ils faisaient à autrui ce qu'ils ne voulaient pas qu'on leur fît, principe immoral sur lequel repose tout l’art de la guerre."

"À en croire certains esprits bornés, — c'est le qualificatif qui leur convient, — l'humanité serait renfermée dans un cercle de Popilius qu'elle ne saurait franchir, et condamnée à végéter sur ce globe sans jamais pouvoir s'élancer dans les espaces planétaires! Il n'en est rien! On va aller à la Lune, on ira aux planètes, on ira aux étoiles, comme on va aujourd'hui de Liverpool à New York, facilement, rapidement, sûrement, et l'océan atmosphérique sera bientôt traversé comme les océans de la Lune!"

"L'esprit humain se plaît à ces conceptions grandioses d'êtres surnaturels. Or la mer est précisément leur meilleur véhicule, le seul milieu où ces géants près desquels les animaux terrestres, éléphants ou rhinocéros, ne sont que des nains — puissent se produire et se développer."

"Qui dit Canadien, dit Français."

"Cet enlèvement, si brutalement exécuté, s'était accompli avec la rapidité de l'éclair... Un rapide frisson me glaça l'épiderme. A qui avions-nous affaire ? Sans doute à quelques pirates d'une nouvelle espèce qui exploitaient la mer à leur façon.A peine l'étroit panneau fut-il refermé sur moi, qu'une obscurité profonde m'enveloppa."

"Nous étions seuls. Où ? Je ne pouvais le dire, à peine l'imaginer. Tout était noir, mais d'un noir si absolu, qu'après quelques minutes, mes yeux n'avaient encore pu saisir une de ces lueurs indéterminées qui flottent dans les plus profondes nuits."

"A quoi bon discuter une proposition semblable, quand la force peut détruire les meilleurs arguments."

"La mer est tout! Elle couvre les sept dixièmes du globe terrestre. Son souffle est pur et sain. C'est l'immense désert où l'homme n'est jamais seul, car il sent frémir la vie à ses côtés. La mer n'est que le véhicule d'une surnaturelle et prodigieuse existence; elle n'est que mouvement et amour."

"Les différences chronologiques s'effacent dans la mémoire des morts."

"Ce ne sont pas de nouveaux continents qu'il faut à la terre, mais de nouveaux hommes!"

"Le Nautilus en brisait les eaux sous le tranchant de son éperon, après avoir accompli près de dix mille lieues en trois mois et demi, parcours supérieur à l'un des grands cercles de la terre. Où allions-nous maintenant, et que nous réservait l'avenir?"

"La liberté vaut qu’on la paye."

"On ne saurait empêcher l'équilibre de produire ses effets. On peut braver les lois humaines, mais non résister aux lois naturelles."

"Voici la conclusion de ce voyage sous les mers. Ce qui se passa pendant cette nuit, comment le canot échappa au formidable remous du Maelstrom, comment Ned Land, Conseil et moi, nous sortîmes du gouffre, je ne saurai le dire."

"Hobson constata, non sans une certaine appréhension, que les ours étaient nombreux sur cette partie du territoire. Il était rare, en effet, qu'un jour se passât sans qu'un couple de ces formidables carnassiers ne fût signalé. Bien des coups de fusil furent adressés à ces terribles visiteurs. Tantôt, c'était une bande de ces ours bruns qui sont fort communs sur toute la région de la Terre-Maudite, tantôt, une de ces familles d'ours polaires d'une taille gigantesque, que les premiers froids amèneraient sans doute en plus grand nombre aux environs du cap Bathurst. Et, en effet, dans les récits d'hivernage, on peut observer que les explorateurs ou les baleiniers sont plusieurs fois par jour exposés à la rencontre de ces carnassiers."

"Quant à voir la ville, il n'y pensait même pas, étant de cette race d'Anglais qui font visiter par leur domestique les pays qu'ils traversent."

"Personne n'ignore que l'Inde — ce grand triangle renversé dont la base est au nord et la pointe au sud — comprend une superficie de quatorze cent mille milles carrés, sur laquelle est inégalement répandue une population de cent quatre-vingts millions d'habitants. Le gouvernement britannique exerce une domination réelle sur une certaine partie de cet immense pays. Il entretient un gouverneur général à Calcutta, des gouverneurs à Madras, à Bombay, au Bengale, et un lieutenant-gouverneur à Agra.'Mais l'Inde anglaise proprement dite ne compte qu'une superficie de sept cent mille milles carrés et une population de cent à cent dix millions d'habitants. C'est assez dire qu'une notable partie du territoire échappe encore à l'autorité de la reine; et, en effet, chez certains rajahs de l'intérieur, farouches et terribles, l'indépendance indoue est encore absolue."

"Qu'un Anglais comme lui fît le tour du monde un sac à la main, passe encore; mais une femme ne pouvait entreprendre une pareille traversée dans ces conditions."

"Phileas Fogg avait gagné son pari. Il avait accompli en quatre-vingts jours ce voyage autour du monde ! Il avait employé pour ce faire tous les moyens de transport, paquebots, railways, voitures, yachts, bâtiments de commerce, traîneaux, éléphant. L'excentrique gentleman avait déployé dans cette affaire ses merveilleuses qualités de sang-froid et d'exactitude. Mais après ? Qu'avait-il gagné à ce déplacement ? Qu'avait-il rapporté de ce voyage ?'Rien, dira-t-on ? Rien, soit, si ce n'est une charmante femme, qui — quelque invraisemblable que cela puisse paraître — le rendit le plus heureux des hommes !'En vérité, ne ferait-on pas, pour moins que cela, le Tour du Monde ?"

"Mieux vaut mettre les choses au pis tout de suite, répondit l’ingénieur, et ne se réserver que la surprise du mieux."

"La nécessité est, d’ailleurs, de tous les maîtres, celui qu’on écoute le plus et qui enseigne le mieux."

"L’homme qui "sait" réussit là où d’autres végéteraient et périraient inévitablement."

"L’homme n’est jamais ni parfait, ni content."

"Yes, but water decomposed into its primitive elements... and decomposed doubtless, by electricity, which will then have become a powerful and manageable force, for all great discoveries, by some inexplicable law, appear to agree and become complete at the same time. Yes, my friends, I believe that water will one day be employed as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which constitute it, used singly or together, will furnish an inexhaustible source of heat and light, of an intensity of which coal is not capable. Some day the coalrooms of steamers and the tenders of locomotives will, instead of coal, be stored with these two condensed gases, which will burn in the furnaces with enormous calorific power. There is, therefore, nothing to fear. As long as the earth is inhabited it will supply the wants of its inhabitants, and there will be no want of either light or heat as long as the productions of the vegetable, mineral or animal kingdoms do not fail us. I believe, then, that when the deposits of coal are exhausted we shall heat and warm ourselves with water. Water will be the coal of the future!"

"Malheur à qui est seul, mes amis, et il faut croire que l’isolement a vite fait de détruire la raison."

"Les hommes, Pencroff, si savants qu’ils puissent être, ne pourront jamais changer quoi que ce soit à l’ordre cosmographique établi par Dieu même.'— Et pourtant, ajouta Pencroff, qui montra une certaine difficulté à se résigner, le monde est bien savant! Quel gros livre, monsieur Cyrus, on ferait avec tout ce qu’on sait!'— Et quel plus gros livre encore avec tout ce qu’on ne sait pas, répondit Cyrus Smith."

"Ainsi est-il du cœur de l’homme. Le besoin de faire œuvre qui dure, qui lui survive, est le signe de sa supériorité sur tout ce qui vit ici-bas. C’est ce qui a fondé sa domination, et c’est ce qui la justifie dans le monde entier."

"La civilisation ne recule jamais, et il semble qu’elle emprunte tous les droits à la nécessité."

"Celui qui se trompe dans une intention qu’il croit bonne, on peut le combattre, on ne cesse pas de l’estimer."

"Les poëtes sont comme les proverbes : l’un est toujours là pour contredire l’autre."

"I would have bartered a diamond mine for a glass of pure spring water!"

"(What books did you read as a child?) I read Emilio Salgari, Jules Verne, Charles Dickens, and all the detective novels I could lay my hands on."

"In a very real sense, Jules Verne is one of the pioneers of the space age."

"It was Jules Verne who launched me on this trip."

"Almost as influential as my natural penchant was a marvelous book, which impressed and fascinated me more than any other—Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. I have re-read it many times, and I confess I sometimes re-read it still, each time finding anew the joys and enthusiasm of my childhood."

"All my texts were written, directly or allusively, to celebrate (Captain Hatteras's) discovery of the North Pole."

"Jules Verne was in a sense the director-general of my life. When I was not more than ten or eleven years old I read his Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea and my young imagination was fired. This generation may have forgotten that Verne was a great scientist as well as the writer of the most romantic fiction of his day."

"For twenty years, the people who move forward have been doing a Jules Verne."

"We found a text in a translation of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea that mentioned Villeroi as the math teacher to Jules Verne. They were from the same city."

"I would also like, in these notes, to pay homage to that man of incommensurable genius, namely Jules Verne. My admiration for him is boundless. In certain pages of Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Five Weeks in a Balloon, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, From the Earth to the Moon, Around the Moon, The Mysterious Island and Hector Servadac, he raised himself to the highest peaks that can be attained by human language. [...] O incomparable master, may you be blessed for the sublime hours which I have spent endlessly reading and rereading your works through my life."

"Je voudrais aussi, dans ces notes, rendre hommage à l’homme d’incommensurable génie que fut Jules Verne. Mon admiration pour lui est infinie. Dans certaines pages du Voyage au centre de la terre, de Cinq Semaines en ballon, de Vingt mille lieues sous les mers, de De la Terre à la Lune et de Autour de la Lune, de l’Île mystérieuse, d’Hector Servadac, il s’est élevé aux plus hautes cimes que puisse atteindre le verbe humain. [...] Ô maître incomparable, soyez béni pour les heures sublimes que j’ai passées toute ma vie à vous lire et à vous relire sans cesse."

"With the vast sweep of his imagination Jules Verne created a whole world of magical things imbued with a delightful naiveté, which just charm us..."

"Veliká fantazie Julesa Vernea vytvořila svět, kouzelný svět plný rozkošné naivity, která je tolik půvabná..."

"I am working in Paris. I cannot for a single day get the thought out of my head that there probably exists something essential, some immutable reality, and now that I have lost everything else (thank God, it gets lost all on its own) I am trying to preserve this and, what is more, not to be content. In a word: I am working."

"For me, Christ has always symbolized the true type of the Jewish martyr. That is how I understood him in 1908 when I used this figure for the first time.. .It was under the influence of the pogroms. Then I painted and drew him in pictures about ghettos, surrounded by Jewish troubles, by Jewish mothers, running terrified with little children in their arms."

"If Russian painters were condemned to become the pupils of the West they were, I think, rather unfaithful ones by their very nature. The best Russian realist conflicts with the realism of Courbet. The most authentic Russian Impressionism leaves on perplexed if one compares it with Monet and Pissaro. Here, in the Louvre, before the canvases of Manet, Millet and others, I understood why my alliance with Russia and Russian art did not take root. Why my language itself is foreign to them. Why people do not place confidence in me. Why the artistic circles fail to recognize me. Why in Russia I am entirely useless.. .In Paris, it seemed to me that I was discovering everything, above all a mastery of technique.. .It was not in technique alone that I sought the meaning of art then. It was as if the gods had stood before me.. .I had the impression that we are still only roaming on the surface of matter, that we are afraid to plunge into chaos, to shatter and overthrow beneath our feet the familiar surface. (reaction on his first arrival in Paris, 1910)"

"In response I am sending you some pictures which I painted in Paris out of homesickness for Russia. They are not very typical of me; I have selected the most modest ones for the Russian exhibition."

"My works are dear to me, each in its own way, I shall have to answer for them on the Day of Judgement. God alone knows whether I shall ever see them again. Quite apart from the money which I was going to receive for their sale there (exhibition in Gallery Der Sturm, Berlin June-July, 1914) and it is no small sum.."

"The sun has only ever shone for me in France (it certainly did that!). I have got used to beating the streets of Paris, happy beyond words dreaming of a life 125 years long - with the Louvre radiant in the distance. (Chagall couldn't go back to Paris because of the outbreak of the first World War in 1914). Having ended up in the Russian provinces, << I have decided to die >>."

"..But it doesn't frighten me, because I studied in France, thank God, and I know of no artist in history who was not 'literary' when it came down to it. Not a single one. And even if they don't appear to be, I know of none and you at least don't recall them, because there is nothing to recall.. .Sometime or other I'd like to see a << pure >> artist, but I didn't even find one in France. Obviously the trouble is that one approaches painting from the other side, so that the word << sujet >> conceals the point of the thing. Yet even the most beautiful and << emptiest >> sujet (an apple, a grape or any << non-figurative painting >>) doesn't help if there are no foundations, either innate or acquired through hard work.. .Why don't we say clearly: << That is freedom, and this is commitment to the subject >> and << to each tree its berries >>, but let it be a tree and not a donkey.."

"Or is all this fuss actually important for << art history >>? Oh, no, never. If things only ever originated as a result of such competition (between subject- and subjectless art) , it wouldn't be worth living among them, like an accidental, capricious toy. Clearly there is a greater, a more serene and more modest power, but we are either too lazy to live by its laws, or we have no time, or it "hurts too much"."

"At present there is an extremely exaggerated formation of groups (students on the School of Art in Vitebsk) around 'trend'; there are 1. young people following Malevich and 2. young people following me. We both belong to the left-wing artistic movement, although we have different ideas about ends and means. Obviously it would take too long to talk about this problem now.. .But there is one thing I will tell you: Although I was born in Russia - and what is more: in the "settlement territory" – I was trained abroad and am all the more sensitive to everything that is taking place here in the field of art (the fine arts). The memory of the splendour of the original is much to painful for me..[to live – crossed out]"

"Now at least 'artists have the upper hand' in the town (Vitebsk). They get totally engrossed in their disputes about art (between constructivists and suprematists), I am utterly exhausted and 'dream' of 'abroad'.. .After all, there is no more suitable place for artists to be (for me, at least) than at the easel, and I dream of being able to devote myself exclusively to my pictures. Of course, little by little one paints something, but it's not the real thing. (Chagall was director of the Art School of Vitebsk, including many conflicts)"

"After completing my work [his murals for the Jewish Theater in Moscow) I thought, as has been agreed, that it would be shown in public as a series of my latest things. The management will agree with me that I can find no inner peace as a painter until the 'masses' see my work etc. It turned out that the things [the murals] had been put into a 'cage', as it were, where they can be seen at the very best by (if you will forgive me for saying so) Jews at close quarters. I like the Jews a lot (there's enough 'proof' of that) but I like the Russians as well and some other nationalities, and I am used to painting serious things for many 'nationalities'."

"I set to work. I pointed a mural for the main wall: Introduction to the New National Theatre. The other interior walls, the ceiling and the friezes depicted the forerunners of the contemporary actor – a popular musician, a wedding jester, a good woman dancing, a copyist of the Torah, the first poet dreamer, and finally a modern couple flying over the stage. The friezes were decorated with dishes and food, beigels and fruits spread out on well-laid tables. I looked forward to meeting the actors who passed me: 'Let us agree. Let's join forces and throw out all this old rubbish. Let's work a miracle!' (c. 1921)"

"In exasperation, I furiously attacked the floors and walls of the Moscow Theater. My mural paintings sight there, in obscurity. Have you seen them? Rant and rave, my contemporaries! In one way or another, my first theatrical alphabet gave you a belly-ache. Not modest? I'll leave that to my grandmother: it bores me. Despise me, if you like. (ca. 1921)"

"The stars were my best friends. The air was full of legends and phantoms, full of mythical and fair-tale creatures, which suddenly flew away over the roof, so that one was at one with the firmament."

"If I weren't a Jew (in the sense in which I use the word) then I wouldn't be an artist, or at least not the one I am now."

"The Jews might well, were they of such a mind (as I am, lament the disappearance of all those who painted the wooden synagogues in the small towns and villages (oh why haven't I gone to my grave with them!), and the carvers of the wooden 'school mallets' – 'quiet boy!' (and if you should see them in Ansky's collection, you’ll get a shock!). But is there really any difference between my ancestor from Mohiliev, who painted the synagogue there, and myself, who painted the Jewish theater in Moscow (and a good theater it is at that)?.. .I am convinced that, were I to stop shaving, you would see in me a deceptive likeness."

"Back in the days (a later reflection on his early Parish years) when I was in Paris in my studio in 'La Ruche', through the partition I heard two Jewish emigrants arguing: 'Well, what would you say? Wasn't Antokolsky a Jewish artist? And Israels? And what about Liebermann?' The dim light of the lamp lit up my picture, which was upside down (that's the way I work – so consider yourself yourselves lucky!). As morning came, and the Parisian sky started to brighten up, I had to laugh about the futile comments of my neighbours on the fate of Jewish art: 'You two wind-backs can carry on – but I've got work to do'."

"'There you are', said Efros [Granovsky, director of the State Jewish Chamber Theater, in 1920], leading me into a dark room, 'These walls are all yours, you can do what you like with them'. It was a completely demolished apartment that had been abandoned by bourgeois refugees. 'You see', he continued, 'the benches for the audience will be here; the stage there'. To tell the truth, all I could see there was the remains of a kitchen.. .And I flung myself at the walls. The canvases were stretched out on the floor. Workmen, actors walked over them. The rooms and corridors were in the process of being repaired; piles of shavings lay among my tubes of paint, my sketches. At every step one dislodged cigarette-ends, crusts of bread."

"Only the great distance that separates Paris from my native town prevented me from going back.. .It was the Louvre that put end to all these hesitations. When I walked around the circular Veronese room and the rooms that the works of Manet, Delacroix and Courbet are in, I desired nothing more. In my imagination Russia [where Chagall was born] took the form of a basket suspended from a parachute. The deflated pear of the balloon was hanging down, growing cold and descending slowly in the course of the years. This was how Russian art appeared to me, or something of the sort.. .It was as if Russian art had been fatally condemned to remain in the wake of the West. (a later quote on his first arrival in Paris, 1910)"

"..No academy could have given me all I discovered by getting my teeth into the exhibitions, the shop windows, and the museums of Paris. Beginning with the market – where, for lack of money, I bought only a piece of a long cucumber – the workman in his blue overall, the most ardent followers of Cubism, everything showed a definite feeling for proportion, clarity, an accurate sense of form, of a more painterly kind of painting, even in the canvases of second-rate artists."

"My grandfather, a teacher of religion, could think of nothing better than to place my father – his eldest son, still a child – as a clerk with a firm of herring wholesalers, and his youngest son with a barber. No, my father was not a clerk, but, for thirty-two years, a plain workman [in the Jewish ghetto of Vitebsk ]. He lifted heavy barrels, and my heart used to twist like a Turkish pretzel as I watched him carrying those loads and stirring the little herrings with his frozen hands.. .Sometimes my father's clothes would glisten with herring brine. The light played above him, besides him. But his face, now yellow, now clear, would sometimes break into a wan smile."

"Listen what happened to me when I was in the fifth form (ca. 1904), in the drawing lesson. An old-timer in the front row, the one who pinched me the most often, suddenly showed me a sketch on tissue paper, copied from the magazine "Niva": The Smoker. In this pandemonium! Leave me alone. I don't remember very well but this drawing, done not by me but by that fathead, immediately threw me into a rage. It roused a hyena in me. I ran to the library, grabbed that big volume of "Niva" and began to copy the portrait of the composer Rubinstein, fascinated by his crow's-feet and his wrinkles, or by a Greek woman and other illustrations; maybe I improvised some too, I hung them all up in my bedroom.."

"Two or three o'clock in the morning. The sky is blue. Dawn is breaking. Down there, a little way off, they slaughtered cattle, cows bellowed, and I painted them. I used to sit up like that all night long. It's already a week since the studio was cleaned out. Frames, eggshells, empty two-sou soup tins lie about higgledy-piggledy.. .On the shelves, reproductions of El Greco and Cézanne lay next tot the remains of a herring I had cut in two, the head for the first day, the tail for the next, and Thank God, a few crusts of bread."

"It's only my town (Chagall was born in Vitebsk), mine, which I have rediscovered. I come back to it with emotion. It was at that time that I painted my Vitebsk series of 1914. (Chagall couldn't go back to Paris because of the outbreak of the first World War in 1914) I painted everything that met my eyes. I painted at my window; I never walked down the street without my box of paint."

"But my knowledge of Marxism was limited to knowing that Marx was a Jew, and that he had a long white beard. I said to Lunatcharsky [the political communist commissar for Education, ca. 1918] 'Whatever you do, don't ask me why I painted in blue or green, and why you can see a calf inside the cow's belly, etc. On the other hand you're welcome: if Marx is so wise, let him come back to life and explain it himself'. I showed him my canvases."

"..In spite of everything, there is still no more wonderful vocation than to continue to tolerate events and to work on in the name of our mission, in the name of that spirit which lives on in our teaching and in our vision of humanity and art, the spirit which can lead us Jews down the true and just path. But along the way, peoples will spill our blood, and that of others."

"If a symbol should be discovered in a painting of mine, it was not my intention. It is a result I did not seek. It is something that may be found afterwards, and which can be interpreted according to taste."

"I know I must live in France, but I don't want to cut myself off from America. France is a picture already painted. America still has to be painted. Maybe that's why I feel freer there. But when I work in America, it's like shouting in a forest. There's no echo."

"Only a child had its place on the cross, and that was enough for me [to paint his Crucifixions, earlier].. ..in the exact sense there was no cross but a blue child in the air. The cross interested me less."

"When I painted Christ's parents I was thinking of my own parents. The bearded man is the Child's father. He is my father. [Chagall stated this in 1950]"

"When I write, I fly to another dimension. Like Eva Luna, I try to live life as I would like it to be, as in a novel. I am always half flying, like Marc Chagall's violinists."

"Jacques Lipchitz and Marc Chagall were among the European artists who settled in New York City during the war...Chagall, after his arrival in 1941, also continued to explore imagery he had developed earlier, including that of the Wandering Jew and the crucified Jesus as well as the inhabitants of East European shtetls or villages."

"Under his [Chagall's] sole impulse metaphor [comparison of images] made its triumphal entry into modern painting."

"When you did catch a glimpse of his eyes, they were as blue as if they’d fallen straight out of the sky. They were strange eyes.. ..long, almond-shaped.. ..and each seemed to sail along by itself, like a little boat."

"He prepared his charcoal pencils, holding them in his hand like a little bouquet. Then he would sit in a large straw chair and look at the blank canvas or cardboard or sheet of paper, waiting for the idea to come. Suddenly he would raise the charcoal with his thumb and, very fast, start tracing straight lines, ovals, lozenges, finding an aesthetic structure in the incoherence. A clown would appear, a juggler, a horse, a violinist, spectators, as if by magic. When the outline was in place, he would back off and sit down, exhausted like a boxer at the end of a round."

"Some art historians have sought to decrypt his symbols, but there's no consensus on what they mean. We cannot interpret them because they are simply part of his world, like figures from a dream."

"When Henri Matisse dies, Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what color really is. I'm not crazy about those cocks and asses and flying violinists and all the folklore, but his canvasses are really painted, not just thrown together. Some of the last thing's he's done in Venice [where Matisse painted his late frescoes in the chapel] convince me that there's never been anybody since Renoir who has the feeling for light that Chagall has. [Picasso is reacting to Chagall's daughter Ida, 1952]"

"I don't know where he [Marc Chagall] gets those images; he must have an angel in his head."

"Degas was discussing poetry with Mallarmé; "It isn't ideas I'm short of... I've got too many" [Ce ne sont pas les idées qui me manquent... J'en ai trop], said Degas. "But Degas," replied Mallarmé, "you can't make a poem with ideas. … You make it with words." [Mais, Degas, ce n'est point avec des idées que l'on fait des vers. . . . C'est avec des mots.]"

"J'invente une langue qui doit nécessairement jaillir d'une poétique très nouvelle, que je pourrais définir en ces deux mots: Peindre, non la chose, mais l'effet qu'elle produit."

"If only I'd chosen an easy work! But, precisely, I, who am sterile and crepuscular, have chosen a terrifying subject, whose sensations , if they are strong, reach the point of atrocity, and if they are vague, have the strange attitude of mystery. And my Verse hurts me at times, and wounds me as if it were of iron! I have, moreover, found an intimate and unique way of painting and noting down the very fleeting impressions. I should add, which is even more terrifying, that all these impressions follow one another as in a symphony, and I often have entire days when I ask myself if this impression can accompany that one, what is their relationship and effect … You can guess that I write few lines in a week."

"It is in front of the paper that the artist creates himself."

"Yes, I know, we are merely empty forms of matter, but we are indeed sublime in having invented God and our soul. So sublime, my friend, that I want to gaze upon matter, fully conscious that it exists, and yet launching itself madly into Dream, despite its knowl edge that Dream has no existence, extolling the Soul and all the divine impressions of that kind which have collected within us from the beginning of time and proclaiming, in the face of the Void which is truth, these glorious lies!"

"In a museum in London there is an exhibit called "The Value of Man": a long coffinlike box with lots of compartments where they've put starch—phosphorus—flour—bottles of water and alcohol—and big pieces of gelatin. I am a man like that."

"Hyperbole! can you not rise In triumph from my memory, A modern magic spell devise As from an ironbound grammary: For I inaugurate through science The hymn of all hearts spiritual In the labor of my patience, Atlas, herbal, ritual."

"O Spirit of litigation, know, When we keep silent in this season, The stem of multiple lilies grew Too large to be contained by reason"

"La chair est triste, hélas! et j'ai lu tous les livres."

"Le monde est fait pour aboutir à un beau livre."

"L'acte poétique consiste à voir soudain qu'une idée se fractionne en un nombre de motifs égaux par valeur et à les grouper; ils riment."

"L'oeuvre pure implique la disparition élocutoire du poëte, qui cède l'initiative aux mots."

"Un Coup de Dés Jamais N'Abolira Le Hasard"

"Ce n'est pas avec des idées qu'on fait des vers, c'est avec des mots."

"Magical shadow with symbolic powers! A voice from the distant past, an evocation, Is it not mine prepared for incantation?"

"When the sad sun sinks, It shall pierce through the body of wax till it shrinks! No sunset, but the red awakening Of the last day concluding everything Struggles so sadly that time disappears, The redness of apocalypse, whose tears Fall on the child, exiled to her own proud Heart, as the swan makes its plumage a shroud For its eyes, the old swan, and is carried away From the plumage of grief to the eternal highway Of its hopes, where it looks on the diamonds divine Of a moribund star, which never more shall shine!"

"Are you a living princess or her shadow? Let me kiss your fingers and their rings, and bid you Walk no longer in an unknown age..."

"A kiss would kill me, woman, If beauty were not death... By what attraction Am I drawn, what morn forgotten by the prophets That pours on the dying distance its sad rites?"

"Away with those perfumes that do me harm! I hate them, nurse, and would you have me feel Their drunken vapors make my senses reel?"

"How, save through obscure Terrors, imagine more implacable still And as a suppliant the god who some day will Receive the gift of your grace! and for whom, Devoured by anguish, do you keep the unknown Splendor and mystery of your being?"

"I wait, but do not know for what or why Or perhaps you are uttering the last bruised sighs, Ignorant of the mystery and of your cries, Of a childhood feeling its frozen gems Being broken off at last amidst its dreams."

"I am alone in my monotonous country, While all those around me live in the idolatry Of a mirror reflecting in its depths serene Herodiade, whose gaze is diamond keen ... O final enchantment! yes, I sense it, I am alone."

"The sun as it's halted Miraculously exalted Resumes its descent Incandescent."

"I feel in my sinews The spreading of shadows Converging together With a shiver And in solitary vigil After flights triumphal My head rise From this scythe Through a clean rupture That serves to dissever The ancient disharmony With the body As drunk from fasting It persists in following With a haggard bound Its gaze profound Up where the frozen Absolute has chosen That nothing shall measure Its vastness, O glacier But according to a ritual Illumined by the principle That chose my consecration It extends a salutation."

"These nymphs I would perpetuate. So clear Their light carnation, that it floats in the air Heavy with tufted slumbers. Was it a dream I loved?"

"All alone I gave Myself for triumph the ideal sin of roses."

"No water murmurs but what my flute pours On the chord sprinkled thicket; and the sole wind Prompt to exhale from my two pipes, before It scatters the sound in a waterless shower, Is, on the horizon's unwrinkled space, The visible serene artificial breath Of inspiration, which regains the sky."

"Inert, all burns in the fierce hour"

"Then shall I awake to the primitive fervour, Straight and alone, 'neath antique floods of light, Lilies and one of you all through my ingenuousness."

"My breast, though proofless, still attests a bite Mysterious, due to some august tooth; But enough! for confidant such mystery chose The great double reed which one plays 'neath the blue."

"I, proud of my rumour, for long I will talk Of goddesses; and by picturings idolatrous, From their shades unloose yet more of their girdles: So when of grapes the clearness I've sucked, To banish regret by my ruse disavowed, Laughing, I lift the empty bunch to the sky, Blowing into its luminous skins and athirst To be drunk, till the evening I keep looking through. Oh nymphs, we diverse MEMORIES refill."

"Ah well, towards happiness others will lead me With their tresses knotted to the horns of my brow: You know, my passion, that purple and just ripe, The pomegranates burst and murmur with bees; And our blood, aflame for her who will take it, Flows for all the eternal swarm of desire."

"Etna! 'tis amid you, visited by Venus On your lava fields placing her candid feet, When a sad stillness thunders wherein the flame dies. I hold the queen!"

"No more, I must sleep, forgetting the outrage, On the thirsty sand lying, and as I delight Open my mouth to wine's potent star! Adieu, both! I shall see the shade you became."

"L'existence du Soldat est (après la peine de mort) la trace la plus douloureuse de barbarie qui subsiste parmi les hommes."

"Tout homme a vu le mur qui borne son esprit."

"L'histoire est un roman dont le peuple est l'auteur."

"On étouffe les clameurs, mais comment se venger du silence?"

"Un désespoir paisible, sans convulsions de colère et sans reproches au ciel est la sagesse même."

"Les acteurs sont bien heureux, ils ont une gloire sans responsabilité."

"La presse est une bouche forcée d'être toujours ouverte et de parler toujours. De là vient qu'elle dit mille fois qu'elle n'a rien à dire."

"Un livre est une bouteille jetée en pleine mer sur laquelle il faut coller cette étiquette: attrape qui peut."

"Le théâtre n'a jamais été en Angleterre qu'une mode des hautes classes ou une débauche du bas peuple."

"I was always fascinated with the 1820s, that romantic decade, and the revolution of 1830 which was of course a disaster everywhere, and 1848. I still read with great joy about that period, I don't know why. It's funny how you find a decade, or a period or a place that you just respond to. (“It is a long time ago, and it's a very confused period…”) Very confused, yes. Very good writers you had in France particularly, Vigny, people like that, oh! I love Vigny, and they meant a great deal to me, those people. I haven't read them for many, many years. But they also shaped my view of the world."

"If I commit suicide, it will not be to destroy myself but to put myself back together again. Suicide will be for me only one means of violently reconquering myself, of brutally invading my being, of anticipating the unpredictable approaches of God. By suicide, I reintroduce my design in nature, I shall for the first time give things the shape of my will."

"It is not opium which makes me work but its absence, and in order for me to feel its absence it must from time to time be present."

"However fiercely opposed one may be to the present order, an old respect for the idea of order itself often prevents people from distinguishing between order and those who stand for order, and leads them in practise to respect individuals under the pretext of respecting order itself."

"Never tire yourself more than necessary, even if you have to found a culture on the fatigue of your bones."

"All true language is incomprehensible, Like the chatter of a beggar’s teeth."

"Where there is a stink of shit there is a smell of being."

"The race of prophets is extinct. Europe is becoming set in its ways, slowly embalming itself beneath the wrappings of its borders, its factories, its law-courts and its universities. The frozen Mind cracks between the mineral staves which close upon it. The fault lies with your mouldy systems, your logic of 2 + 2 = 4. The fault lies with you, Chancellors, caught in the net of syllogisms. You manufacture engineers, magistrates, doctors, who know nothing of the true mysteries of the body or the cosmic laws of existence. False scholars blind outside this world, philosophers who pretend to reconstruct the mind. The least act of spontaneous creation is a more complex and revealing world than any metaphysics."

"The Theatre of Cruelty has been created in order to restore to the theatre a passionate and convulsive conception of life, and it is in this sense of violent rigour and extreme condensation of scenic elements that the cruelty on which it is based must be understood. This cruelty, which will be bloody when necessary but not systematically so, can thus be identified with a kind of severe moral purity which is not afraid to pay life the price it must be paid."

"With society and its public, there is no longer any other language than that of bombs, barricades, and all that follows."

"Tragedy on the stage is no longer enough for me, I shall bring it into my own life."

"There are souls that are incurable and lost to the rest of society. Deprive them of one means of folly, they will invent ten thousand others. They will create subtler, wilder methods, methods that are absolutely desperate. Nature herself is fundamentally antisocial, it is only by a usurpation of powers that the organized body of society opposes the natural inclination of humanity."

"So long as we have failed to eliminate any of the causes of human despair, we do not have the right to try to eliminate those means by which man tries to cleanse himself of despair."

"Hell is of this world and there are men who are unhappy escapees from hell, escapees destined eternally to reenact their escape."

"Suicidez-vous, désespérés, et vous, torturés du corps et de l'âme, perdez tout espoir. Il n'y a plus pour vous de soulagement en ce monde. Le monde vit de vos charniers."

"Ah! How neatly tied, in these people, is the umbilical cord of morality! Since they left their mothers they have never sinned, have they? They are apostles, they are the descendants of priests; one can only wonder from what source they draw their indignation, and above all how much they have pocketed to do this, and in any case what it has done for them."

"You are outside life, you are above life, you have miseries which the ordinary man does not know, you exceed the normal level, and it is for this that men refuse to forgive you, you poison their peace of mind, you undermine their stability. You have irrepressible pains whose essence is to be inadaptable to any known state, indescribable in words. You have repeated and shifting pains, incurable pains, pains beyond imagining, pains which are neither of the body nor of the soul, but which partake of both. And I share your suffering, and I ask you: who dares to ration our relief?... We are not going to kill ourselves just yet. In the meantime, leave us the hell alone."

"When we speak the word “life,” it must be understood we are not referring to life as we know it from its surface of fact, but to that fragile, fluctuating center which forms never reach."

"The theater, which is in no thing, but makes use of everything—gestures, sounds, words, screams, light, darkness—rediscovers itself at precisely the point where the mind requires a language to express its manifestations.... To break through language in order to touch life is to create or recreate the theatre."

"Theater of Cruelty means a theater difficult and cruel for myself first of all. And, on the level of performance, it is not the cruelty we can exercise upon each other by hacking at each other’s bodies, carving up our personal anatomies, or, like Assyrian emperors, sending parcels of human ears, noses, or neatly detached nostrils through the mail, but the much more terrible and necessary cruelty which things can exercise against us. We are not free. And the sky can still fall on our heads. And the theater has been created to teach us that first of all."

"Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others. Then we might even come to see that it is our veneration for what has already been created, however beautiful and valid it may be, that petrifies us."

"There is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea, shining in his head, frightened people, and for whom delirium was the only solution to the strangulation that life had prepared for him."

"It is not a certain conformity of manners that the painting of Van Gogh attacks, but rather the conformity of institutions themselves. And even external nature, with her climates, her tides, and her equinoctial storms, cannot, after Van Gogh’s stay upon earth, maintain the same gravitation."

"It is almost impossible to be a doctor and an honest man, but it is obscenely impossible to be a psychiatrist without at the same time bearing the stamp of the most incontestable madness: that of being unable to resist that old atavistic reflex of the mass of humanity, which makes any man of science who is absorbed by this mass a kind of natural and inborn enemy of all genius."

"It is thus that the few rare lucid well-disposed people who have had to struggle on the earth find themselves at certain hours of the day or night in the depth of certain authentic and waking nightmare states, surrounded by the formidable suction, the formidable tentacular oppression of a kind of civic magic which will soon be seen appearing openly in social behavior."

"I myself spent nine years in an insane asylum and I never had the obsession of suicide, but I know that each conversation with a psychiatrist, every morning at the time of his visit, made me want to hang myself, realizing that I would not be able to cut his throat."

"No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented except literally to get out of hell."

"But how is one to make a scientist understand that there is something unalterably deranged about differential calculus, quantum theory, or the obscene and so inanely liturgical ordeals of the precession of the equinoxes."

"And what is an authentic madman? It is a man who preferred to become mad, in the socially accepted sense of the word, rather than forfeit a certain superior idea of human honor. So society has strangled in its asylums all those it wanted to get rid of or protect itself from, because they refused to become its accomplices in certain great nastinesses. For a madman is also a man whom society did not want to hear and whom it wanted to prevent from uttering certain intolerable truths."

"[Nietzsche’s] definition of cruelty informs Artaud’s own, declaring that all art embodies and intensifies the underlying brutalities of life to recreate the thrill of experience … Although Artaud did not formally cite Nietzsche, [their writing] contains a familiar persuasive authority, a similar exuberant phraseology, and motifs in extremis …"

"Artaud sought to remove aesthetic distance, bringing the audience into direct contact with the dangers of life. By turning theatre into a place where the spectator is exposed rather than protected, Artaud was committing an act of cruelty upon them."

"Amors sanz crieme et sans peor Est feus sanz flame et sanz chalor, Jorz sanz soloil, bresche sanz miel, Estez sans flor, iverz sanz giel, Ciaus sanz lune, livres sanz letre."

"Bien pert que c'est aprés mangier, Fet Kex, qui teire ne se pot Plus a paroles an plain pot De vin qu'an un mui de cervoise."

"Joie d'amors qui vient a tart Sanble la vert busche qui art, Qui dedanz rant plus grant chalor Et plus se tient en sa valor, Quant plus demore a alumer."

"Qu'a toz mangiers est sausse fains Bien destanpree et bien confite."

"Par le sornon connoist on l'ome."

"Nus ne puet estre trop parliers Qui sovent tel chose ne die Qui torné li est affolie, Car li sages dit et retrait: Qui trop parole, il se mesfait."

"Que molt est malvais qui oblie S'on li fait honte ne laidure."

"Qui baise feme et plus n'i fait, Des qu'il sont sol a sol andui, Dont quit je qu'il remaint en lui. Feme qui se bouche abandone Le sorplus molt de legier done."

"Our books have informed us that the pre-eminence in chivalry and learning once belonged to Greece. Then chivalry passed to Rome, together with that highest learning which now has come to France. God grant that it may be cherished here, and that it may be made so welcome here that the honour which has taken refuge with us may never depart from France: God had awarded it as another's share, but of Greeks and Romans no more is heard, their fame is passed, and their glowing ash is dead."

"He was one of the first explorers of the human heart, and is therefore rightly to be numbered among the fathers of the novel of sentiment."

"Chrétien is nothing if not versatile: popular, recherché, allusive, insistent, arch, naïve, racy and demure...He has a dramatist's flair for the handling of dialogue, a deft and economic way with characterization, the sharp confidence of the logician in his handling of rhetorical figures and the self-assurance of the entertainer in the deployment of humour (he is master of the verbal nudge). It is his essential vivacity that one misses most in his imitators."

"Ay, 'tis thus. Evil us hath in bond; By Thy grace guilt efface and respond "Forgiven!""

"O forgive! Thy sons live from Thee reft; Praised for grace, Turn thy face to those left, "Forgiven!""

"Prince, je congnois tout en somme, Je congnois coulourez et blesmes, Je congnois Mort qui tout consomme, Je congnois tout, fors que moy mesmes."

"Freres humains qui après nous vivez, N'avez les cuers contre nous endurcis."

"Bien est verté que j'ay amé Et ameroie voulentiers; Mais triste cuer, ventre affamé Qui n'est rassasié au tiers M'oste des amoureux sentiers. Au fort, quelqu'ung s'en recompence, Qui est ramply sur les chantiers! Car la dance vient de la pance."

"Mes jours s'en sont allez errant."

"Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?"

"De chiens, d'oyseaulx, d'armes, d'amous," Chascun le dit a la vollee, "Pour une joye cent doulours."

"Folles amours font le gens bestes: Salmon en ydolatria, Samson en perdit ses lunettes. Bien est eureux qui riens n'y a!"

"En ceste foy je vueil vivre et mourir."

"Deux estions et n’avions qu'ung cuer."

"Mais, quoy que soit du laboureux mestier, Il n'est tresor que de vivre a son aise."

"Prince, aux dames Parisiennes De beau parler donnez le pris; Quoy qu'on die d'Italiennes, Il n'est bon bec que de Paris."

"Vente, gresle, gelle, j'ay mon pain cuit. Ie suis paillart, la paillarde me suit. Lequel vault mieulx? Chascun bien s'entresuit. L'ung vault l'autre; c'est a mau rat mau chat. Ordure amons, ordure nous assuit; Nous deffuyons onneur, il nous deffuit, En ce bordeau ou tenons nostre estat."

"The vision that impels feminists to action was the vision of the Grandmothers' society, the society that was captured in the words of the sixteenth-century explorer Peter Martyr nearly five hundred years ago. It is the same vision repeated over and over by radical thinkers of Europe and America, from François Villon to John Locke, from William Shakespeare to Thomas Jefferson, from Karl Marx to Friedrich Engels, from Benito Juarez to Martin Luther King, from Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Judy Grahn, from Harriet Tubman to Audre Lorde, from Emma Goldman to Bella Abzug, from Malinalli to Cherrie Moraga, and from Iyatiku to me. That vision as Martyr told it is of a country where there are "no soldiers, no gendarmes or police, no nobles, kings, regents, prefects, or judges, no prisons, no lawsuits... All are equal and free," or so Friedrich Engels recounts Martyr's words."

"The Large Testament is a hurly-burly of cynical and sentimental reflections about life, jesting legacies to friends and enemies, and, interspersed among these many admirable ballades, both serious and absurd. With so free a design, no thought that occurred to him would need to be dismissed without expression; and he could draw at full length the portrait of his own bedevilled soul, and of the bleak and blackguardly world which was the theatre of his exploits and sufferings. If the reader can conceive something between the slap-dash inconsequence of Byron's Don Juan and the racy humorous gravity and brief noble touches that distinguish the vernacular poems of Burns, he will have formed some idea of Villon's style. To the latter writer – except in the ballades, which are quite his own, and can be paralleled from no other language known to me – he bears a particular resemblance."

"Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name."

"There has been no greater artist in French verse, as there has been no greater poet; and the main part of the history of poetry in France is the record of a long forgetting of all that Villon found out for himself."

"But where is last year's snow? This was the greatest care that Villon, the Parisian poet, took."

"Li rois d'Engleterre et li sien, qui s'en venoient tout singlant, regardent et voient devers l'Escluse si grant quantité de vaissiaus que des mas ce sambloient droitement uns bos."

"Lors respondi li rois et demanda au chevalier, qui s'appelloit messires Thumas de Nordvich: "Messires Thumas, mes filz est il ne mors ne atierés, ou si bleciés qu'il ne se puist aidier?" Cilz respondi: "Nennil, monsigneur, se Dieu plaist; mais il est en dur parti d'armes: si aroit bien mestier de vostre ayde." "Messire Thumas, dist li rois, or retournés devers lui et devers chiaus qui ci vous envoient, et leur dittes de par moy qu'il ne m'envoient meshui requerre pour aventure qui leur aviegne, tant que mes filz soit en vie. Et dittes leur que je leur mande que il laissent à l'enfant gaegnier ses esporons; car je voel, se Diex l'a ordonné, que la journée soit sienne, et que li honneur l'en demeure et à chiaus en qui carge je l'ai bailliet.""

"Gautier, vous en irées à chiaus de Calais, et dirés au chapitainne, monsigneur Jehan de Viane, que vous avés tant travilliet pour yaus, et ossi ont tout mi baron, que je me sui accordés à grant dur à ce que la plus grant grasce qu'il poront trouver ne avoir en moy, c'est que il se partent de le ville de Calais six des plus notables bourgeois, en purs les chiés et tous, deschaus, les hars ou col, les clés de le ville et dou chastiel en leurs mains. Et de chiaus je ferai ma volonté, et le demorant je prenderai à merci."

"Ensi fu ceste bataille desconfite que vous avés oy, qui fu ès camps de Maupetruis à deux liewes de le cité de Poitiers, le vingt unième jour dou mois de septembre, l'an de grasce Nostre Signeur mil trois cens cinquante six. Si commença environ heure de prime, et fu toute passée à none; mès encores n'estoient point tout li Englès qui caciet avoient, retourné de leur cace et remis ensamble…Et fu là morte, si com on recordoit adonc pour le temps, toute li fleur de la chevalerie de France: de quoi li nobles royaumes fu durement afoiblis, et en grant misère et tribulation eschei, ensi que vous orés recorder chi après."

"Cils Jehan Balle avoit eut d'usage que, les jours dou diemence après messe, quant toutes les gens issoient hors dou moustier, il s'en venoit en l'aitre et là praiechoit et faissoit le peuple assambler autour de li, et leur dissoit: "Bonnes gens, les coses ne poent bien aler en Engletière ne iront jusques à tant que li bien iront tout de commun et que il ne sera ne villains ne gentils homs, que nous ne soions tout ouni.""

"Et, se venons tout d'un père et d'une mere, Adam et Eve, en quoi poent il dire ne monstrer que il sont mieux signeur que nous, fors parce que il nous font gaaignier et labourer ce que il despendent? Il sont vestu de velours et de camocas fourés de vair et de gris, et nous sommes vesti de povres draps. Il ont les vins, les espisses et les bons pains, et nous avons le soille, le retrait et le paille, et buvons l'aige. Ils ont le sejour et les biaux manoirs, et nous avons le paine et le travail, et le pleue et le vent as camps, et faut que de nous viengne et de nostre labeur ce dont il tiennent les estas."

"Et scahiez que Anglois et Escoçoiz, quant ilz se treuvent en bataille ensamble, sont dures gens et de longue alainne, et point ne s'esparngnent, mais s'entendent de eulx mettre à oultranche, comment qu'il prende. Ilz ne ressamblent pas les Alemans qui font une empainte, et, quant ilz voient qu'ilz ne puellent rompre ne entrer en leurs ennemis, ilz s'en retournent tout à ung fais."

"Ce lévrier nommé Blemach…laissa le roy et s'en vint tout droit au duc de Lancastre, et luy fist toutes les contenances telles que en devant il faisoit au roy Richart, et luy assist ses deux pies sus les epaules et le commença moult grandement à conjouir. Adont le duc de Lancastre qui point ne congnoissoit le lévrier, demanda au roy et dist: "Mais que veult ce lévrier faire?"…"Cestuy lévrier vous recueille et festoie aujourd'huy comme roy d'Angleterre que vous serés, et j'en seray déposé.""

"Considerés que c'est de pueple, quant il s'esmuet et esliève et il a puissance contre son seigneur, et par especial en Angleterre. Là n'y a-il nul remède, car c'est le plus périlleus poeuple commun qui soit au monde et le plus oultrageux et orgueilleux. Et de tous ceulx d'Angleterre Londriens sont chiefs."

"His chapters inspire me with more enthusiasm than even poetry itself. And the noble canon, with what true chivalrous feeling he confines his beautiful expressions of sorrow to the death of the gallant and high-bred knight, of whom it was a pity to see the fall, such was his loyalty to his king, pure faith to his religion, hardihood towards his enemy, and fidelity to his lady-love! – Ah, benedicite! how he will mourn over the fall of such a pearl of knighthood, be it on the side he happens to favour, or on the other. But, truly, for sweeping from the face of the earth some few hundreds of villain churls, who are born but to plough it, the high-born and inquisitive historian has marvellous little sympathy."

"I should not complain of the labour of this work, if my materials were always derived from such books as the chronicle of honest Froissard...who read little, enquired much, and believed all. The original Memoirs of the marechal de Boucicault...add some facts, but they are dry and deficient, if compared with the pleasant garrulity of Froissard."

"At Queen Philippa's court his fastidious eyes were spared the sight, which was moving Langland to realism, of the disbanded soldiery begging their bread along the countryside. Most of his busy days were spent with princes and potentates, and it is idle to ask how far this experience suits the impartial muse of history…He possessed, too, a prodigious memory; and his keen eye for detail and the wealth and colour of his narrative produced such a record of the fourteenth century as Langland could never have composed. Posterity can but return thanks that the picture has been drawn from both aspects."

"Allons enfants de la Patrie, Le jour de gloire est arrivé! Contre nous de la tyrannie, L'étendard sanglant est levé, (bis) Entendez-vous dans les campagnes Mugir ces féroces soldats? Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras Égorger vos fils, vos compagnes! Aux armes, citoyens, Formez vos bataillons, Marchons, marchons! Qu'un sang impur Abreuve nos sillons!"

"To arms! to arms! ye brave! The avenging sword unsheathe! March on! march on! all hearts resolved On victory or death!"

"Et musique est une science Qui veut qu'on rie et chante et dance. Cure n'a de merencolie, Ne d'homme qui merencolie A chose qui ne puet valoir, Eins met tels gens en nonchaloir. Partout ou elle est joie y porte; Les desconfortez reconforte, Et nes seulement de l'oir Fait elle les gens resjoir."

"Qui de sentement ne fait, Son dit et son chant contrefait."

"Et quant ma maladie Garie Ne sera nullement Sans vous, douce anemie, Qui lie Estes de mon tourment, A jointes mains deprie Vo cuer, puis qu'il m'oublie, Que temprement m'ocie, Car trop langui longuement. Douce dame jolie, Pour dieu ne penses mie Que nulle ait signourie Seur moy fors vous seulement."

"Ma fin est mon commencement Et mon commencement ma fin."

"Seize all the joy you can that robs no other. Sleep in peace, play in jolly earnest, wag well and mean it, and finally, be happy always. The more I see of dogs the less I think of men. Whoever beats dogs loves not man."

"Whoever embarks with a woman embarks with a storm; but they are themselves the safety boats."

"Friendship lives on its income, love devours its capital."

"Have you not sometimes seen happiness? Yes, the happiness of others."

"We must always have old memories and young hopes."

"Be·l saupra plus cobert far! Mas non a chans pretz enter, Can tuch no·n son parsoner."

"Qu'eu cut c'atretan grans sens Es, qui sap razo gardar, Com los motz entrebeschar."

"Bel companho, en chantan vos apel! No dormatz plus, qu'eu auch chantar l'auzel Que vai queren lo jorn per lo boschatge Et ai paor que.l gilos vos assatge Et ades sera l'alba."

"Bel dous companh, tan sui en ric sojorn Qu'eu no volgra mais fos l'alba ni jorn, Car la gensor que anc nasques de maire Tenc et abras, per qu'eu non prezi gaire Lo fol gilos ni l'alba."

"E fo meiller trobaire que negus d'aquels qu'eron estat denan ni foron après lui; per que fo apellatz maestre dels trobadors, et es ancar per totz aquels que ben entendon subtils ditz ni ben pauzatz d'amor e de sen."

"E si tot venta'ill freg'aura, L'amor qu'ins el cor mi pleu Mi ten caut on plus iverna."

"Ieu sui Arnautz qu'amas l'aura E cas la lebre ab lo bueu E nadi contra suberna."

"En breu brizara'l temps braus E'l biza, e'l brus e'l blancx Qui s'entresenhon trastuig De sobre claus ram de fuelha."

""O frate," disse, "chesti qu'io ti cerno col ditto," e additò un spirto innanzi, "fu miglior fabbro del parlar materno. Versi d'amore e prose di romanzi soverchiò tutti; e lascia dir li stolti che quel di Lemosì credon ch'avanzi."

"Fra tutti il primo Arnaldo Danïello Gran maestro d'amor; ch'a la sua terra Ancor fa onor col suo dir strano e bello."

"Mas greu veiretz fin' amansa ses paor e ses doptansa, c'ades tem om vas so c'ama, falhir, per qu'eu no·m aus de parlar enardir."

"Can vei la lauzeta mover De joi sas alas contra·l rai, Que s'oblid'e·s laissa chazer Per la doussor c'al cor li vai, Ai, tan grans enveya m'en ve De cui qu'eu veya jauzïon."

"D'aisso's fa be femna parer Ma domna, per qu'e·lh o retrai, Car no vol so c'om deu voler, E so c'om li deveda, fai."

"Chantars no pot gaire valer, Si d'ins dal cor no mou lo chans! Ni chans no pot dal cor mover, Si no i es fin' amors coraus."

"Aisso non es amors; aitaus No·n a mas lo nom e·l parven, Que re non ama si no pren."

"The world's a stage where God's omnipotence, His justice, knowledge, love, and providence Do act the parts."

"Mercy and justice, marching cheek by joule."

"What is well done is done soon enough."

"And swans seem whiter if swart crowes be by."

"Night's black mantle covers all alike."

"And reads, though running, all these needful motions."

"Not unlike the bear which bringeth forth In the end of thirty dayes a shapeless birth; But after licking, it in shape she drawes, And by degrees she fashions out the pawes, The head, and neck, and finally doth bring To a perfect beast that first deformed thing."

"Bright-flaming, heat-full fire, The source of motion."

"Much like the French (or like ourselves, their apes), Who with strange habit do disguise their shapes; Who loving novels, full of affectation, Receive the manners of each other nation."

"From north to south, from east to west."

"Hot and cold, and moist and dry."

"From the foure corners of the worlde doe haste."

"Oft seen in forehead of the frowning skies."

"With tooth and nail."

"'T is what you will,—or will be what you would."

"Or savage beasts upon a thousand hils."

"Not that the earth doth yield In hill or dale, in forest or in field, A rarer plant."

"To man the earth seems altogether No more a mother, but a step-dame rather."

"For where's the state beneath the firmament That doth excel the bees for government?"

"A good turn at need, At first or last, shall be assur'd of meed."

"There is no theam more plentifull to scan Than is the glorious goodly frame of man."

"Or almost like a spider, who, confin'd In her web's centre, shakt with every winde, Moves in an instant if the buzzing flie Stir but a string of her lawn canapie."

"These lovely lamps, these windows of the soul."

"Even as a surgeon, minding off to cut Some cureless limb,—before in ure he put His violent engins on the vicious member, Bringeth his patient in a senseless slumber, And grief-less then (guided by use and art), To save the whole, sawes off th' infested part."

"Two souls in one, two hearts into one heart."

"Which serves for cynosure To all that sail upon the sea obscure."

"Turning our seed-wheat-kennel tares, To burn-grain thistle, and to vaporie darnel, Cockle, wild oats, rough burs, corn-cumbring Tares."

"Apoplexie and lethargie, As forlorn hope, assault the enemy."

"Living from hand to mouth."

"Dog, ounce, bear, and bull, Wolfe, lion, horse."

"Yielding more wholesome food than all the messes That now taste-curious wanton plenty dresses."

"In every hedge and ditch both day and night We fear our death, of every leafe affright."

"In the jaws of death."

"Did thrust as now in others' corn his sickle."

"Will change the pebbles of our puddly thought To orient pearls."

"Soft carpet-knights, all scenting musk and amber."

"The will for deed I doe accept."

"Only that he may conform To tyrant custom."

"Sweet grave aspect."

"My lovely living boy, My hope, my hap, my love, my life, my joy."

"Who breaks his faith, no faith is held with him."

"Flesh of thy flesh, nor yet bone of thy bone."

"Out of the book of Natur's learned brest."

"Who well lives, long lives; for this age of ours Should not be numbered by years, daies, and hours."

"Through thick and thin, both over hill and plain."

"Weakened and wasted to skin and bone."

"I take the world to be but as a stage, Where net-maskt men do play their personage."

"Made no more bones."

"Jejunis nil scribo: meum post pocula si quis legerit, hic sapiet. Sed magis hic sapiet, si dormiet: et putet ista somnia missa sibi."

"Quis color ille vadis, seras cum propulit umbras Hesperus et viridi perfudit monte Mosellam! tota natant crispis iuga motibus et tremit absens pampinus et vitreis vindemia turget in undis."

"Errantes silva in magna et sub luce maligna inter harundineasque comas gravidumque papaver et tacitos sine labe lacus, sine murmure rivos, quorum per ripas nebuloso lumine marcent fleti, olim regum et puerorum nomina, flores."

"Tot species, tantosque ortus variosque novatus una dies aperit, conficit ipsa dies."

"Collige, virgo, rosas, dum flos novus et nova pubes, et memor esto aevum sic properare tuum."

"Monumenta fatiscunt: mors etiam saxis nominibusque venit."

"Omne aevum curae; cunctis sua displicet aetas."

"Multis terribilis timeto multos."

"Iniurium est de poeta male sobrio lectorem abstemium iudicare."

"The poetical fame of Ausonius condemns the taste of his age."

"In the history of versification did anyone ever juggle so wildly well with iambics, sapphics, dactylics, anapestics, and all the rest? He fabricated verses most ingeniously, most enthusiastically. His virtuosity is amazing. Almost every line he wrote was a tour de force. And in spite of all this highly self-conscious technical facility he managed occasionally to write poetry."

"Ausonius must be read to be believed! As poet, no subject is too trivial for him; as courtier, no flattery too excessive."

"It is the things which Ausonius reveals unconsciously that win him liking, not those which he sets out to celebrate with a kind of innocent pomp: not the chair of rhetoric at twenty-five, nor the imperial tutorship in his fifties, nor the consulship at sixty-nine, but that he loved and taught rhetoric all his life, and kept his simplicity."

"Bonam quippe intentionem, hoc est, rectam in se dicimus, operationem vero non quod boni aliquid in se suscipiat, sed quod ex bona intentione procedat. Unde et ab eodem homine cum in diversis temporibus idem fiat, pro diversitate tamen intentione eius operatio modo bono modo mala dicitur."

"O quanta qualia sunt illa sabbata, quae semper celebrat superna curia."

"The purpose and cause of the incarnation was that He might illuminate the world by His wisdom and excite it to the love of Himself."

"There are many seeming contradictions and even obscurities in the innumerable writings of the church fathers. Our respect for their authority should not stand in the way of an effort on our part to come at the truth. The obscurity and contradictions in ancient writings may be explained upon many grounds, and may be discussed without impugning the good faith and insight of the fathers. A writer may use different terms to mean the same thing, in order to avoid a monotonous repetition of the same word. Common, vague words may be employed in order that the common people may understand; and sometimes a writer sacrifices perfect accuracy in the interest of a clear general statement. Poetical, figurative language is often obscure and vague. Not infrequently apocryphal works are attributed to the saints. Then, even the best authors often introduce the erroneous views of others and leave the reader to distinguish between the true and the false. Sometimes, as Augustine confesses in his own case, the fathers ventured to rely upon the opinions of others."

"Doubtless the fathers might err; even Peter, the prince of the apostles, fell into error: what wonder that the saints do not always show themselves inspired? The fathers did not themselves believe that they, or their companions, were always right. Augustine found himself mistaken in some cases and did not hesitate to retract his errors. He warns his admirers not to look upon his letters as they would upon the Scriptures, but to accept only those things which, upon examination, they find to be true. All writings belonging to this class are to be read with full freedom to criticize, and with no obligation to accept unquestioningly; otherwise they way would be blocked to all discussion, and posterity be deprived of the excellent intellectual exercise of debating difficult questions of language and presentation."

"I have ventured to bring together various dicta of the holy fathers, as they came to mind, and to formulate certain questions which were suggested by the seeming contradictions in the statements. These questions ought to serve to excite tender readers to a zealous inquiry into truth and so sharpen their wits. The master key of knowledge is, indeed, a persistent and frequent questioning. Aristotle, the most clear-sighted of all the philosophers, was desirous above all things else to arouse this questioning spirit, for in his Categories he exhorts a student as follows: "It may well be difficult to reach a positive conclusion in these matters unless they be frequently discussed. It is by no means fruitless to be doubtful on particular points." By doubting we come to examine, and by examining we reach the truth."

"Q1 Must human faith be completed by reason, or not?"

"Q2 Does faith deal only with unseen things, or not?"

"Q3 Is there any knowledge of things unseen, or not?"

"Q4 May one believe only in God alone, or not?"

"Q5 Is God a single unitary being, or not?"

"Often the hearts of men and women are stirred, as likewise they are soothed in their sorrows, more by example than by words. And therefore, because I too have known some consolation from speech had with one who was a witness thereof, am I now minded to write of the sufferings which have sprung out of my misfortunes, for the eyes of one who, though absent, is of himself ever a consoler. This I do so that, in comparing your sorrows with mine, you may discover that yours are in truth nought, or at the most but of small account, and so shall you come to bear them more easily."

"St. Jerome, whose heir methinks I am in the endurance of foul slander, says in his letter to Nepotanius: "The apostle says: 'If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.' He no longer seeks to please men, and so is made Christ's servant" (Epist. 2). And again, in his letter to Asella regarding those whom he was falsely accused of loving: "I give thanks to my God that I am worthy to be one whom the world hates" (Epist. 99). And to the monk Heliodorus he writes: "You are wrong, brother, you are wrong if you think there is ever a time when the Christian does not suffer persecution. For our adversary goes about as a roaring lion seeking what he may devour, and do you still think of peace? Nay, he lieth in ambush among the rich." Inspired by those records and examples, we should endure our persecutions all the more steadfastly the more bitterly they harm us. We should not doubt that even if they are not according to our deserts, at least they serve for the purifying of our soul. And since all things are done in accordance with the divine ordering, let every one of true faith console himself amid all his afflictions with the thought that the great goodness of God permits nothing to be done without reason, and brings to a good end whatsoever may seem to happen wrongfully. Wherefore rightly do all men say: "Thy will be done." And great is the consolation to all lovers of God in the word of the Apostle when he says: "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God" (Rom. viii, 28). The wise man of old had this in mind when he said in his Proverbs: "There shall no evil happen to the just" (Prov. xii, 21). By this he clearly shows that whosoever grows wrathful for any reason against his sufferings has therein departed from the way of the just, because he may not doubt that these things have happened to him by divine dispensation. ///Even such are those who yield to their own rather than to the divine purpose, and with hidden desires resist the spirit which echoes in the words, "Thy will be done," thus placing their own will ahead of the will of God. Farewell."

"Sometimes I grieve for the house of the Paraclete, and wish to see it again. Ah, Philintus! does not the love of Heloise still burn in my heart? I have not yet triumphed over that happy passion. In the midst of my retirement I sigh, I weep, I pine, I speak the dear name of Heloise, pleased to hear the sound, I complain of the severity of Heaven. But, oh! let us not deceive ourselves: I have not made a right use of grace. I am thoroughly wretched. I have not yet torn from my heart deep roots which vice has planted in it. For if my conversion was sincere, how could I take a pleasure to relate my past follies? Could I not more easily comfort myself in my afflictions? Could I not turn to my advantage those words of God himself, If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if the world hate you, ye know that it hated me also? Come Philintus, let us make a strong effort, turn our misfortunes to our advantage, make them meritorious, or at least wipe out our offences; let us receive, without murmuring, what comes from the hand of God, and let us not oppose our will to his. Adieu. I give you advice, which could I myself follow, I should be happy."

"When love has once been sincere, how difficult it is to determine to love no more? 'Tis a thousand times more easy to renounce the world than love. I hate this deceitful faithless world; I think no more of it; but my heart, still wandering, will eternally make me feel the anguish of having lost you, in spite of all the convictions of my understanding. In the mean time tho' I so be so cowardly as to retract what you have read, do not suffer me to offer myself to your thoughts but under this last notion. Remember my last endeavours were to seduce your heart. You perished by my means, and I with you. The same waves swallowed us both up. We waited for death with indifference, and the same death had carried us headlong to the same punishments. But Providence has turned off this blow, and our shipwreck has thrown us into an haven. There are some whom the mercy of God saves by afflictions. Let my salvation be the fruit of your prayers! let me owe it to your tears, or exemplary holiness! Tho' my heart, Lord! be filled with the love of one of thy creatures, thy hand can, when it pleases, draw out of it those ideas which fill its whole capacity. To love Heloise truly is to leave her entirely to that quiet which retirement and virtue afford. I have resolved it: this letter shall be my last fault. Adieu. If I die here, I will give orders that my body be carried to the house of the Paraclete. You shall see me in that condition; not to demand tears from you, it will then be too late; weep rather for me now, to extinguish that fire which burns me. You shall see me, to strengthen your piety by the horror of this carcase; and my death, then more eloquent than I can be, will tell you what you love when you love a man. I hope you will be contented, when you have finished this mortal life, to be buried near me. Your cold ashes need then fear nothing, and my tomb will, by that means, be more rich and more renowned."

"Abélard would find most of his old problems sensitive to his touch today. Time has settled few or none of the essential points of dispute. Science hesitates, more visibly than the Church ever did, to decide once for all whether Unity or Diversity is ultimate law; whether order or chaos is the governing rule of the Universe, if Universe there is; whether anything except phenomena exists. Even in matters more vital to society, one dares not speak too loud. Why, and for what, and to whom, is man a responsible agent? Every jury and judge, every lawyer and doctor, every legislator and clergyman has his own views, and the law constantly varies. Every nation may have a different system. One court may hang, and another may acquit for the same crime, on the same day; and Science only repeats what the Church said to Abélard, that where we know so little, we had better hold our tongues."

"Peter Abelard (1079-1142) was the preeminent philosopher of the twelfth century and perhaps the greatest logician of the middle ages. During his life he was equally famous as a poet and a composer, and might also have ranked as the preeminent theologian of his day had his ideas earned more converts and less condemnation. In all areas Abelard was brilliant, innovative, and controversial. He was a genius. He knew it, and made no apologies. His vast knowledge, wit, charm, and even arrogance drew a generation of Europe's finest minds to Paris to learn from him."

"Abelard's best known writings are his autobiography the Historia Calamitatum (The Story of my Misfourtunes), the letters he exchanged with Heloise, and the Sic et Non. The Historia, written after Abelard's escape from St. Gildas, details Abelard's rise to fame and the misfortunes of his fall. It is addressed to an unidentified friend with the hope that this friend will feel better about his own suffering after reading of Abelard's. The real purpose was likely to remind people of Abelard's past fame and to pave the way for a return to Paris. The letters of Abelard and Heloise discuss issues ranging from their relationship to theological and philosophical matters affecting Heloise's nuns at the Paraclete."

"The fundamental commitment behind Abelard's nominalism, that there is nothing that is not individual (or at least particular), is the conceptual core of all his metaphysical thought. Abelard held that the individual is primary, ontologically basic, and requires no explanation. It is notoriously difficult to prove such a claim. If Abelard could be said to have a metaphysical project it would be to show that other "items" that more promiscuous philosophers would add to their ontology can be reductively explained in terms of individuals (or at least of particulars). Abelard asserts that individuals are integral wholes, and he adopts the language of form-matter composites to describe individuals, but the form is nothing other than the arrangement of the parts that comprise the whole. … Abelard holds a doctrine of double creation. God first created the four basic elements and then combined the four basic elements into various individuals according to the exemplars in his mind …. Only God has this power to assemble parts into a single discrete individual substance. Only God can impose form on matter … It makes perfect sense for Abelard to talk about forms, but the form is not a part of the individual. This is the hallmark of Abelard's reductivism; "form" is a name for an objectively discernable feature of the individual, not for an ontologically distinct item. Individuals thus created are discreet from all others; they share no matter or form, yet they are similar. Abelard will explain this in terms of natures or substantial forms, but again prefers a reductive account. Individuals have a certain nature because they have a certain substantial form, but this substantial form is not a part of the individual or any item that could be shared by two individuals. In contemporary terms Abelard would be a resemblance nominalist. Individuals created by God according to the same exemplar will be naturally similar in the way that houses made according to the same blueprint are similar. This similarity is real, not conventional, but nothing in addition to the individuals is required to explain this fact. The individuals that populate the world fall into natural kinds. Natures themselves do not need to be posited to explain this fact about the world."

"Almost a thousand years ago, a teacher fell in love with his student. Almost a thousand years ago, they began a torrid affair. They made love in the kitchens of convents and in the boudoir of the girl's uncle. They wrote hundreds of love letters. When the girl bore a child, they were secretly married, but the teacher was castrated by henchmen of the enraged uncle. At her lover's bidding, the girl took religious orders. He took the habit of a monk. They retreated into separate monasteries and wrote to each other until parted by death. The story of Abelard and Heloise hardly resonates with the spirit of our age. Not least, its origins in the classroom offend: teachers, we know, are not supposed to fall in love with their students. Heloise, moreover, is no feminist heroine, despite having been one of the best educated women of her age and writing some of its most affecting prose. Nobody who takes the veil on the command of her husband and swears "complete obedience" to him can hope to sneak into the bastion of feminism. Today, even the high romance of the couple's liaison strikes us as foreign: all that sacrifice and intensity! … The notion that passion might comprise not only joy but pain, not only self-realization but self-abandonment, seems archaic. To admire, as an early-20th-century biographer of Abelard and Heloise does, the "beauty of souls large enough to be promoted to such sufferings" seems downright perverse. And yet there's a grandeur to high-stakes romance, to self-sacrifice, that's missing from our latex-love culture — and it's a grandeur we perhaps crave to recover. How else to account for the flurry of new writing on these two ill-fated 12th-century lovers? … Only recently — and miraculously — has a new cache of material turned up, fragments of 113 letters that many scholars believe Abelard and Heloise exchanged before Abelard's castration. Copied in the 15th century by a monk named Johannes de Vespria, discovered in 1980 by Constant J. Mews and finally published as The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard, these short but eloquent missives present two people vying — with no coyness or gender typecasting whatever — to outdo each other in expressions of adoration. … The love stories that touch us most deeply are punctuated by human frailty. Look at them up close and you see the fault lines, compromises and anticlimaxes. At the beginning of Shakespeare's play, Romeo is just as intemperately in love with a girl called Rosaline as he is later with Juliet. Tristan and Isolde's passion could well be the fruit of substance abuse, of a love potion they drank unknowingly. And Abélard and Heloise? They weren't equally strong or passionate or generous. Still, they put their frailties together and begat a perfect myth, as well as something perhaps even more precious — a surprising, splendid, fractured reality. "There is a crack," the Leonard Cohen lyric goes, "a crack in everything: that's how the light gets in.""

"Les sanglots longs Des violons De l'automne Blessent mon cœur D'une langueur Monotone."

"Et je m'en vais Au vent mauvais Qui m'emporte Deçà, delà, Pareil à la Feuille morte."

"La lune blanche Luit dans les bois; De chaque branche Part une voix Sous la ramée."

"Il pleure dans mon cœur Comme il pleut sur la ville. Quelle est cette langueur Qui pénètre mon cœur?"

"C'est bien la pire peine De ne savoir pourquoi Sans amour et sans haine Mon cœur a tant de peine!"

"Qu'as-tu fait, ô toi que voilà Pleurant sans cesse, Dis, qu'as-tu fait, toi que voilà De ta jeunesse?"

"De la musique avant toute chose, Et pour cela préfère l'Impair Plus vague et plus soluble dans l'air Sans rien en lui qui pèse ou qui pose. Il faut aussi que tu n'ailles point Choisir tes mots sans quelque méprise: Rien de plus cher que la chanson grise Où l'Indécis au Précis se joint."

"Pas la Couleur, rien que la nuance!"

"Prends l'éloquence et tords-lui son cou! Tu feras bien, en train d'énergie, Du rendre un peu la Rime assagie. Si l'on n’y veille, elle ira jusqu’où? Ô qui dira les torts de la Rime! Quel enfant sourd ou quel nègre fou Nous a forgé ce bijou d'un sou Qui sonne creux et faux sous la lime?"

"Que ton vers soit la bonne aventure Éparse au vent crispé du matin Qui va fleurant la menthe et le thym… Et tout le reste est littérature."

"Anna Margolin was greatly influenced by Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Rimbaud; among the Germans, by Else Lasker-Schüler and Rainer Maria Rilke; and among the Yiddish poets, by Itsik Manger and Avrom Sutzkever."

"That time, that excitement, I will always remember,/like a song without words, like a poem by Verlaine."

"Two of the most perfect lives I have come across in my own experience are the lives of Verlaine and of Prince Kropotkin: both of them men who have passed years in prison: the first, the one Christian poet since Dante; the other, a man with a soul of that beautiful white Christ which seems coming out of Russia."

"Verlaine, the maudit poet, but with a strong religious torment that ended up prevailing, speaking of the love for Mary: «all other loves are orders». With similar words, he wanted to underline that "free" character of Marian devotion that the Church has always safeguarded. Over 20 centuries, only a few dogmas have been proclaimed about her di lei: which among other things, we know, are at the service and shelter of her di lei Son di lei, well before her di lei. Only to these defined truths does the Catholic owe homage. Everything else, regarding Mary, is left to the free sensitivity and initiative of the believer."

"Car en mon cuer porte couvertement Le dueil qui soit qui plus me puet desplaire, Et si me fault, pour les gens faire taire, Rire en plorant et très amerement De triste cuer chanter joyeusement."

"Seulete suy et seulete vueil estre, Seulete m'a mon doulz ami laissiée, Seulete suy, sanz compaignon ne maistre, Seulette suy, dolente et courrouciée."

"Cellui ou celle en qui plus a vertus est le plus hault, ne la haulteur ou abbaisement des gens ne gist mie es corps selon le sexe mais en la perfeccion des meurs et des vertus."

"Si la coustume estoit de mettre les petites filles a l'escole, et que communement on les fist apprendre les sciences comme on fait aux filz, qu'elles apprendroient aussi parfaitement et entenderoient les subtilités de toutes les arz et sciences comme ils font."

"Quantes femmes est il qui usent leur vie au lien de mariage par la durte de leurs maris en plus grant penitence que se elles feussent esclaves entre les sarazins."

"Théâtre des ris et des pleurs Lit! où je nais, et où je meurs, Tu nous fais voir comment voisins Sont nos plaisirs et chagrins."

"Mignonne, allons voir si la rose Qui ce matin avoit desclose Sa robe de pourpre au Soleil, A point perdu ceste vesprée Les plis de sa robe pourprée. Et son teint au vostre pareil."

"Tandis que vostre âge fleuronne En sa plus verte nouveauté, Cueillez, cueillez vostre jeunesse: Comme à ceste fleur la vieillesse Fera ternir vostre beauté."

"Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, à la chandelle, Assise auprès du feu, dévidant et filant, Direz, chantant mes vers, en vous émerveillant: "Ronsard me célébrait du temps que j'étais belle.""

"Cueillez dès aujourd'hui les roses de la vie."

"Je voudrais être le ruban qui serre ta belle poitrine; Je voudrais être le carcan qui orne ta gorge ivoirine."

"Ny trop haut, ny trop bas, c’est le souverain style; Tel fut celuy d’Homère, et celuy de Virgile."

"Poete hault, loenge d'escuiye, En ton jardin ne seroie qu'ortie."

"Aussi tost vient à Pasques limaçon."

"Tuit estrangier l'aiment et ameront, Car pour deduit et pour estre jolis, Jamais cité tele ne trouveront: Riens ne se puet comparer a Paris."

"Se tout le ciel estoit de feuilles d'or, Et li airs fust estellés d'argent fin, Et tous les vens fussent pleins de tresor, Et les gouttes fussent toutes florin D'eaue de mer, et pleust soir et matin Richesses, biens, honeurs, joiaux, argent, Tant que rempli en fust toute la gent, La terre aussi en fust mouillee toute, Et fusse nu, – de tel pluie et tel vent Ja sur mon cors n'en cherroit une goutte."

"On ne fait non plus de cas de pauvres que de couillons: on les laisse à la porte; jamais n'entrent."

"Le rire pour l'âme et le vin pour le corps."

"De cette alliance nouvelle, car jusqu'ici les décors et les costumes, d'une part, la choréographie, d'autre part, n'avaient entre eux qu'un lien factice, il est résulté, dans Parade, une sorte de sur-réalisme."

"La géométrie est aux arts plastiques ce que la grammaire est à l'art de l'écrivain."

"The poems I am writing at the moment will be much closer to your present way of thinking.I am trying to renew poetic style,but within a classical framework.On the other hand,I don't want to lapse into imitating others.Letter to Picasso 1918"

"A la fin tu es las de ce monde ancien Bergère ô tour Eiffel le troupeau des ponts bêle ce matin Tu en as assez de vivre dans l'antiquité grecque et romaine"

"Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine Et nos amours Faut-il qu'il m'en souvienne La joie venait toujours après la peine Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure Les jours s'en vont je demeure"

"L'amour s'en va comme cette eau courante L'amour s'en va Comme la vie est lente Et comme l'Espérance est violente"

"Passent les jours et passent les semaines Ni temps passé Ni les amours reviennent"

"Mon beau navire ô ma mémoire Avons-nous assez navigué Dans une onde mauvaise à boire Avons-nous assez divagué De la belle aube au triste soir"

"Adieu faux amour confondu Avec la femme qui s'éloigne Avec celle que j'ai perdue L'année dernière en Allemagne Et que je ne reverrai plus Voie lactée ô sœur lumineuse Des blancs ruisseaux de Chanaan Et des corps blancs des amoureuses Nageurs morts suivrons-nous d’ahan Ton cours vers d'autres nébuleuses"

"Moi qui sais des lais pour les reines Les complaintes de mes années Des hymnes d'esclave aux murènes La romance du mal-aimé Et des chansons pour les sirènes"

"Et ma vie pour tes yeux lentement s'empoisonne"

"Et l'unique cordeau des trompettes marines"

"Un jour Un jour je m'attendais moi-même Je me disais Guillaume il est temps que tu viennes Pour que je sache enfin celui-là que je suis Moi qui connais les autres"

"Je passais au bord de la Seine Un livre ancien sous le bras Le fleuve est pareil à ma peine Il s'écoule et ne tarit pas Quand donc finira la semaine"

"J'ai cueilli ce brin de bruyère L'automne est morte souviens-t'en Nous ne nous verrons plus sur terre Odeur du temps brin de bruyère Et souviens-toi que je t'attends"

"Passons passons puisque tout passe Je me retournerai souvent Les souvenirs sont cors de chasse Dont meurt le bruit parmi le vent"

"Me voici devant tous un homme plein de sens Connaissant la vie et de la mort ce qu'un vivant peut connaître Ayant éprouvé les douleurs et les joies de l'amour Ayant su quelquefois imposer ses idées Connaissant plusieurs langages Ayant pas mal voyagé Ayant vu la guerre dans l'Artillerie et l'lnfanterie Blessé à la tête trépané sous le chloroforme Ayant perdu ses meilleurs amis dans l'effroyable lutte Je sais d'ancien et de nouveau autant qu'un homme seul pourrait des deux savoir"

"Nous voulons explorer la bonté contrée énorme où tout se tait"

"Voici que vient l'été la saison violente Et ma jeunesse est morte ainsi que le printemps Ô soleil c'est le temps de la raison ardente"

"Ô bouches l'homme est a la recherche d'un nouveau langage Auquel le grammairien d'aucune langue n'aura rien à dire"

"Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy."

"Come to the edge. We might fall. Come to the edge. It's too high! COME TO THE EDGE! And they came And he pushed And they flew."

"Ce qui fait le poète, n'est-ce pas l'amour, la recherche désespérée du moindre rayon de soleil d'autrefois jouant sur le parquet d'une chambre d'enfant?"

"Le mythe de Prométhée signifie que toute la tristesse du monde a son siège dans le foie. Mais qui oserait reconnaître une vérité si humble?"

"On atteint aisément une âme vivante à travers les crimes, les vices les plus tristes, mais la vulgarité est infranchissable."

"Presque tous les hommes ressemblent à ces grands palais déserts dont le propriétaire n'habite que quelques pièces; et il ne pénètre jamais dans les ailes condamnées."

"Où finit la correction? Où commence le martyre? Dans l'entre-deux, des milliers d'enfants peuplent un enfer qui ne fait pas de bruit."

"Il s'en est fallu de très peu que les larmes de Judas ne fussent confondues, dans le souvenir des hommes, avec celles de Pierre. Il aurait pu devenir un saint, le patron de nous tous qui ne cessons de trahir."

"J’aime tellement l’Allemagne que je suis heureux qu’il y en ait deux."

"Il y a une chose plus triste à perdre que la vie, c’est la raison de vivre, Plus triste que de perdre ses biens, c’est de perdre son espérance."

"Il n'y a pour les choses et pour les poèmes qu'une seule manière d'être nouveaux, c'est d'être vrais et qu'une seule manière d'être jeunes, c'est d'être éternels."

"Si l'ordre est le plaisir de la raison, le désordre est le délice de l'imagination."

"In the little moment that remains to us between the crisis and the catastrophe, we may as well drink a glass of champagne."

"Art imitates nature not in its effects as such, but in its causes, in its ‘manner,’ in its process, which are nothing but a participation in and a derivation of actual objects, of the Art of God himself."

"J'avais complètement oublié la religion et j'étais à son égard d'une ignorance sauvage. La première lueur de vérité me fut donnée par la rencontre des livres d'un grand poète, à qui je dois une éternelle reconnaissance, et qui a eu dans la formation de ma pensée une part prépondérante, Arthur Rimbaud. La lecture des Illuminations, puis, quelques mois après, d'Une Saison en enfer, fut pour moi un événement capital. Pour la première fois, ces livres ouvraient une fissure dans mon bagne matérialiste et me donnaient l'impression vivante et presque physique du surnaturel."

"Nam qui maxume doctus sibi videtur, dictionem sanam et insanam ferme appetitu pari revolvit, non amplius concupiscens erecta quae laudet quam despecta quae rideat. atque in hunc modum scientia pompa proprietas linguae Latinae iudiciis otiosorum maximo spretui est, quorum scurrilitati neglegentia comes hoc volens tantum legere, quod carpat, sic non utitur litteris, quod abutitur."

"Hi sunt, quos timent etiam qui timentur."

"O neccessitas abiecta nascendi, vivendi misera dura moriendi."

"Mors obruit illos, non timor; invicti perstant animoque supersunt jam prope post animam."

"Quid me, etsi valeam, parare carmen Fescenninicolae iubes Diones inter crinigeras situm catervas et Germanica verba sustinentem, laudantem tetrico subinde vultu quod Burgundio cantat esculentus infundens acido comam butyro?"

"Ex hoc barbaricis abacta plectris spernit senipedem stilum Thalia, ex quo septipedes videt patronos."

"If on my theme I rightly think, There are five reasons why men drink,— Good wine, a friend, because I'm dry, Or lest I should be by and by, Or any other reason why."

"Officium officialium, quorum te numero aggregasti, hodie est, jura confundere, suscitare lites, transactiones rescindere, innectere dilationes, suprimere veritatem, fovere mendacium, quaestum sequi, aeqitatem vendere, inhiare exactionibus, versutias concinnare."

"Aqua turbida piscosior est."

"Male ulciscitur dedecus sibi illatum, qui amputat nasum suum."

"D'ordinaire, ceux qui gouvernent les enfants ne leur pardonnent rien, et se pardonnent tout à eux-mêmes."

"Remarquez un grand défaut des éducations ordinaires: on met tout le plaisir d'un côté , et tout l'ennui de l'autre; tout l'ennui dans l'étude, tout le plaisir dans les divertissements."

"Les traités de paix ne couvrent rien, lorsque vous êtes le plus fort, & que vous réduisez vos voisins à signer le traité pour éviter de plus grands maux: alors il signe comme un particulier donne sa bourse à un voleur qui lui tient le pistolet sur la gorge."

"Toutes les guerres sont civiles; car c'est toujours l'homme contre l'homme qui répand son propre sang, qui déchire ses propres entrailles."

"Je proteste que personne n'admire Cicéron plus que je fais: il embellit tout ce qu’il touche."

"Le bon historien n'est d'aucun temps ni d'aucun pays: quoiqu'il aime sa patrie, il ne la flatte jamais en rien."

"Nous verrons à sa lumière, dans l'éternité, que ce que nous désirions nous eût été funeste, et que ce que nous voulions éviter était essentiel à notre bonheur."

"Sur-tout ne vous laissez point ensorceler par les attraits diaboliques de la géométrie."

"L'humilité produit le support d'autrui. La vue seule de nos misères peut nous rendre compatissants et indulgents pour celles d'autrui"

"When you come to be sensibly touched, the scales will fall from your eyes; and by the penetrating eyes of love you will discern that which your other eyes will never see."

"The river of grace, it is true, is not dried up; but often, in order to water new lands, it diverts its course and leaves only dry sand in the old canal. Faith has not died out, I admit; but it is not bound to any of the places it illumines; it leaves behind it a frightful night for those who have scorned the day, and it carries rays of light to purer eyes."

"Quiconque est capable de mentir est indigne d'être compté au nombre des hommes; et quiconque ne sait pas se taire est indigne de gouverner."

"Tout le genre humain n’est qu’une famille dispersée sur la face de toute la terre. Tous les peuples sont frères, et doivent s’aimer comme tels."

"Les hommes sont fort à plaindre d'avoir à être gouvernés par un roi, qui n'est qu'homme semblable à eux; car il faudroit des dieux pour redresser les hommes. Mais les rois ne sont pas moins à plaindre, n'étant qu'hommes, c'est-à-dire foibles et imparfaits, d'avoir à gouverner cette multitude innombrable d'hommes corrompus et trompeurs."

"Jesus Christ was born in a stable; He was obliged to fly into Egypt; thirty years of His life were spent in a workshop; He suffered hunger, thirst, and weariness; He was poor, despised, and miserable; He taught the doctrines of heaven, and no one would listen. The great and the wise persecuted and took Him, subjected Him to frightful torments, treated Him as a slave, and put Him to death between two malefactors, having preferred to give liberty to a robber, rather than to suffer Him to escape. Such was the life which our Lord chose; while we are horrified at any kind of humiliation, and cannot bear the slightest appearance of contempt."

"Let us endeavor to commence every enterprise with a pure view to the glory of God, continue it without distraction, and finish it without impatience."

"A cross borne in simplicity, without the interference of self-love to augment it, is only half a cross. Suffering in this simplicity of love, we are not only happy in spile of the cross, but because of it; for love is pleased in suffering for the Well Beloved, and the cross which forms us into His image is a consoling bond of love."

"We must bear our crosses; self is the greatest of them all. If we die in part every day of our lives, we shall have but little to do on the last. O how utterly will these little daily deaths destroy the power of the final dying!"

"This poor world, the object of so much insane attachment, we are about to leave; it is but misery, vanity, and folly; a phantom, — the very fashion of which "passeth away.""

"If we had strength and faith enough to trust ourselves entirely to God, and follow Him simply wherever He should lead us, we should have no need of any great effort of mind to reach perfection."

"God's treasury where He keeps His children's gifts will be like many a mother's store of relics of her children, full of things of no value to others, but precious in His eyes for the love's sake that was in them."

"As a general rule, those truths which we highly relish, and which shed a degree of practical light upon the things which we are required to give up for God, are leadings of Divine grace, which we should follow without hesitation."

""My Father, it is dark!" "Child, take my hand, Cling close to me; I'll lead thee through the land, Trust my all-seeing care, so shalt thou stand 'Midst glory bright above." Can we be unsafe where God has placed us, and where He watches over us as a parent a child that he loves?"

"The kingdom of God which is within us consists in our willing whatever God wills, always, in every thing, and without reservation; and thus His kingdom comes; for His will is then done as it is in heaven, since we will nothing but what is dictated by His sovereign pleasure."

"This is the love that does all things; that brings to pass even the evils we suffer; so shaping them that they are but instruments of preparing the good which, as yet, has not arrived."

"We may be sure that it is the love of God only that can make us come out of self. If His powerful hand did not sustain us, we should not know how to take the first step in that direction."

"Thou lovest like an infinite God when Thou lovest; Thou movest heaven and earth to save Thy loved ones. Thou becomest man, a babe, the vilest of men, covered with reproaches, dying with infamy and under the pangs of the cross; all this is not too much for an infinite love."

"The presence of God calms the soul, and gives it quiet and repose."

"God works in a mysterious way in grace as well as in nature, concealing His operations under an imperceptible succession of events, and thus keeps us always in the darkness of faith."

"We are never less alone than when we are in the society of a single, faithful friend; never less deserted than when we are carried in the arms of the All-Powerful."

"God never makes us sensible of our weakness except to give us of His strength."

"Carefully purify your conscience from daily faults; suffer no sin to dwell in your heart; small as it may seem, it obscures the light of grace, weighs down the soul, and hinders that constant communion with Jesus Christ which it should be your pleasure to cultivate."

"True love goes ever straight forward, not in its own strength, but esteeming itself as nothing. Then indeed we are truly happy. The cross is no longer a cross when there is no self to suffer under it."

"Pure love is in the will alone; it is no sentimental love, for the imagination has no part in it; it loves, if we may so express it, without feeling, as faith believes without seeing."

"If there is any thing that can render the soul calm, dissipate its scruples, and dispel its fears, sweeten its sufferings by the anointing of love, impart strength to it in all its actions, and spread abroad the joy of the Holy Spirit in its countenance and words, it is a simple, free, and child-like repose in the arms of God."

"O Lord! take my heart, for I cannot give it; and when Thou hast it, O! keep it, for I cannot keep it for Thee; and save me in spite of myself, for Jesus Christ's sake."

"If we love Him infinitely more than we do ourselves, we make an unconditional sacrifice of ourselves to His good pleasure, desiring only to love Him and to forget ourselves. He who thus loses his soul shall find it again with eternal life."

"There is but one way in which God should be loved, and that is to take no step except with Him and for Him, and to follow with a generous self-abandonment every thing which He requires."

"O God, the creature knows not to what end Thou hast made Him; teach him, and write in the depths of his soul that the clay must suffer itself to be shaped at the will of the potter."

"If we love Him infinitely more than we do ourselves, we make an unconditional sacr"

"Here it is that the Spirit teaches us all truth; for all truth is eminently contained in this sacrifice of love, where the soul strips itself of every thing to present it to God."

"As the reflections of our pride upon our defects are bitter, disheartening, and vexatious, so the return of the soul towards God is peaceful and sustained by confidence. You will find by experience how much more your progress will be aided by this simple, peaceful turning towards God, than by all your chagrin and spite at the faults that exist in you."

"We sleep in peace in the arms of God when we yield ourselves up to His providence, in a delightful consciousness of His tender mercies; no more restless uncertainties, no more anxious desires, no more impatience at the place we are in, for it is God who has put us there, and who holds us in His arms. Can we be unsafe where He has placed us, and where He watches over us as a parent watches a child? This confiding repose, in which earthly care sleeps, is the true vigilance of the heart; yielding itself up to God, with no other support than Him, it thus watches while we sleep. This is the love of Him that will not sleep even in death."

"Commit yourself then to God! He will be your guide. He Himself will travel with you, as we are told He did with the Israelites, to bring them step by step across the desert to the promised land. Ah! what will be your blessedness, if you will but surrender yourself into the hands of God, permitting Him to do whatever He will, not according to your desires, but according to His own good pleasure?"

"Je suis le fou de Pampelune, J'ai peur du rire de la Lune, Cafarde, avec son crêpe noir... Horreur ! tout est donc sous un éteignoir."

"Jetie leat foun dre Randelina ni de Princess Mi Amore Cadenza J'ai peauradu di rangle din ennemie loveia yourie noblenie liveae, Dangiel din ase lifie truthia geniuse impossiblta... Horriiea! Terrorie di nothine more than nightmareas exists nota foreverie."

"Si est del riche orguillus: Ja del povre n'avra merci Pur sa pleinte ne pur sun cri; Mes se cil s'en peüst vengier, Dunc le verreit l'um suzpleier."

"Mes ki ne mustre s'enferté A peine en peot aver santé: Amur est plaie dedenz cors, E si ne piert nïent defors. Ceo est un mal que lunges tient, Pur ceo que de nature vient."

"Amur n'est pruz se n'est egals."

"Ki divers cunte veut traitier, Diversement deit comencier E parler si rainablement K'il seit pleisibles a la gent."

"Tutes les dames de une tere Vendreit il meuz d'amer requere Quë un fol de sun pan tolir; Kar cil volt an eire ferir."

"D'euls deus fu il tut autresi Cume del chevrefoil esteit Ki a la codre se perneit: Quant il s'i est laciez e pris Ensemble poënt bien durer; Mes ki puis les volt deservrer, Li codres muert hastivement E li chevrefoil ensement. "Bele amie, si est de nus: Ne vus sanz mei, ne mei sanz vus!""

"Tel cinc cent parolent d'amur, N'en sevent pas le pior tur, Ne que est loiax druerie."

"Se l'uns des amans est loiax, E li autre est jalox è faus, Si est amors entr'ex fausée, Ne puet avoir lunge durée. Amors n'a soing de compagnun, Boin amors n'est se de Dex nun, De cors en cors, de cuer en cuer, Autrement n'est prex à nul fuer. Tulles qui parla d'amistié, Dist assés bien en son ditié, Que vent amis, ce veut l'amie Dunt est boine la compaignie, S'ele le veut è il l'otreit. Dunt la druerie est à dreit, Puisque li uns l'autre desdit, N'i a d'amors fors c'un despit; Assés puet-um amors trover, Mais sens estuet al' bien garder, Douçour è francise è mesure."

"La haine, c'est la colère des faibles!"

"Voyez-vous, mes enfants, quand le blé est mûr, il faut le couper; quand le vin est tiré, il faut le boire."

"Les enfants sont comme les hommes, l'expérience d'autrui ne leur sert pas."

"Méfie-toi de celui qui rit avant de parler!"

"Douleur toujours nouvelle pour celui qui souffre et qui se banalise pour l'entourage."

"Habile façon dont la mort fauche, fait ses coupes, mais seulement des coupes sombres. Les générations ne tombent pas d'un coup; ce serait trop triste, trop visible. Par bribes. Le pré attaqué de plusieurs côtés à la fois. Un jour, l'un; l'autre, quelque temps après; il faut de la réflexion, un regard autour de soi pour se rendre compte du vide fait, de la vaste tuerie contemporaine."

"Il n'est pas défendu, en littérature, de ramasser une arme rouillée; l'important est de savoir aiguiser la lame et d'en reforger la poignée à la mesure de sa main."

"C'est ça la gloire. Un bon cigare dans la bouche par le côté du feu et de la cendre."

"L'homme du Midi ne ment pas, il se trompe. Il ne dit pas toujours la vérité, mais il croit la dire."

"Le seul menteur du Midi, s'il y en a un, c'est le soleil. Tout ce qu'il touche, il l'exagère!"

"Où serait le mérite, si les héros n’avaient jamais peur?"

"L'épithète doit être la maîtresse du substantif, jamais sa femme légitime."

"Que de gens à bibliothèques sur la bibliothèque desquels on pourrait écrire: "Usage externe!" comme sur les fioles de pharmacie."

"A quinze ans, vingt ans tout au plus, on est déjà achevé d'imprimer."

"Les hommes vieillissent, mais ne mûrissent pas."

"Le désespoir lui-même, pour peu qu'il se prolonge, devient une sorte d'asile dans lequel on peut s'asseoir et reposer."

"Gardons-nous de l'ironie en jugeant. De toutes les dispositions de l'esprit, l'ironie est la moins intelligente."

"Puisqu'il faut avoir des ennemis, tâchons d'en avoir qui nous fassent honneur."

"Renouveler les choses connues, vulgariser les choses neuves: un bon programme pour un critique."

"Le plus souvent nous ne jugeons pas les autres, mais nous jugeons nos propres facultés dans les autres."

"Le silence seul est le souverain mépris."

"A philosophical thought has probably not attained all its sharpness and all its illumination until it is expressed in French"

"On “the phenomenon of grace”. “For the soul arrives therebye at a certain fixed and invincible state, a state which is genuinely heroic, and from out of which the greatest deeds it ever performs are executed”."

"Il m'a souvent passe par l'esprit, dit Gourville, que les hommes ont leurs proprietes a peu pres commes les herbes, et que leur bonheur consiste d'avoir ete destines ou de s'etre destines eux-memes aux choses pour lesquelles ils etaient nes."

"...je puis goûter une œuvre, mais il m'est difficile de la juger indépendamment de la connaissance de l'homme même, et je dirais volontiers: tel arbre, tel fruit."

"L'injustice…est une mère qui n'est jamais sterile, et qui produit des enfants dignes d'elle."

"He had imperfections, prejudices, limitations, but when we have recognised them all, he remains the greatest literary critic that the world has seen."

"The nearest approach to the infallible in literary judgment is represented in the colossal work of the teacher of all these three [Edmund Gosse, Edward Dowden and George Saintsbury], the greatest critic that ever lived – not an Englishman, but a Frenchman, the wonderful Sainte-Beuve."

"The greatest of all French critics, and possibly the greatest European critic since Aristotle."

"Il n'y a de vraiment beau que ce qui ne peut servir à rien; tout ce qui est utile est laid."

"Virginité, mysticisme, mélancolie, – trois mots inconnus, – trois maladies nouvelles apportées par le Christ."

"Ils sont si transparents qu'ils laissent voir votre âme."

"Le poète est ainsi dans les Landes du monde. Lorsqu'il est sans blessure, il garde son trésor. Il faut qu'il ait au cœur une entaille profonde Pour épancher ses vers, divines larmes d'or!"

"Naître, c'est seulement commencer à mourir."

"Oui, l'œuvre sort plus belle D'une forme au travail Rebelle, Vers, marbre, onyx, émail."

"Tout passe. – L'art robuste Seul a l'éternité, Le buste Survit à la cité. Et la médaille austère Que trouve un laboureur Sous terre Révèle un empereur."

"Le hasard, c'est peut-être le pseudonyme de Dieu quand il ne veut pas signer."

"L'art pour l'art signifie, pour les adeptes, un travail dégagé de toute préoccupation autre que celle du beau en lui-même."

"Je suis un homme pour qui le monde visible existe."

"Demander à la poésie du sentimentalisme…ce n'est pas ça. Des mots rayonnants, des mots de lumière…avec un rythme et une musique, voilà ce que c'est, la poésie."

"The second romantics are true seers: Th. Gautier, Lec. de Lisle, Th. de Banville. But to explore the invisible and to hear the unheard are very different from reviving the dead."

"I believe in the magic and authority of words."

"Why did I become a writer? A bird's feather on my windowpane in winter and all at once there arose in my heart a battle of embers never to subside again."

"Un poète doit laisser des traces de son passage, non des preuves. Seules les traces font rêver."

"With my teeth I have seized life Upon the knife of my youth. With my lips today, With my lips alone…"

"Char embodies the ideal of the poet fighting for the nobility of the world — the leader of a small resistance group dedicated to honoring the ten thousand things of the universe. Mountains and rivers, flowers and vipers, meteors and rain — everything teems with meaning for this poet. … Illumination was his theme, his method — "For me lightning lasts," Char declared. His work is an essay in revelation."

"A tour de force into the ineffable."

"In that poem "keeping vigil" for René Char means writing the poem. The poem is the vigil. Sometimes one wants to hold up a lighted wick before a certain name. In the case of Char it has to do with the fusion of poetry and active resistance to fascism, in his life, with no loss to the poetry. Leaves of Hypnos is also a record of an unusual masculinity caught up in war but not deluded by it."

"History has always felt to me an immense resource for art, and poetry as a place where history can be kept alive-not grandmaster narratives, but otherwise forgotten or erased people and actions...In Midnight Salvage there's the poem drawn from René Char's resistance journals"

"I think of the poetry of René Char and all he must have seen and suffered that has brought him to speak only of sedgy rivers, of daffodils and tulips whose roots they water, even to the free-flowing river that laves the rootlets of those sweet-scented flowers that people the milky way"

"The cries of a dying dog are to be blotted out as best I can. René Char you are a poet who believes in the power of beauty to right all wrongs. I believe it also. With invention and courage we shall surpass the pitiful dumb beasts, let all men believe it, as you have taught me also to believe it."

"A mops thinks 'I commited heresy'. But did it? To be a heretic, you have to know the Spirit."

"Benáres, that name is full of odours which have fled. By thy shores I saw the smoke from the pyres of three dead."

"We loved each other. No faithfulness my love did lack. Love, you divine flame; you hole of colour: black."

"Pick me up, o stranger, it is no sin, so lovely is my smell. Violet's a smile of those who in their graves now dwell."

"The flourishing of bursts of energy dies beyond us."

"The rigidity of forms impedes their transmission."

"The Cinema is too rich; it is obese."

"The evolution of art has nothing to do with the revolution of society."

"In my pictures I would use speech as an extra dimension supplementing the image … Speech would not come off the screen in coincidence with the sequences, but from without, as if it were a surplus unconnected with the organism - a cravat of drivel hung on an ivory tooth."

"Our only means of original manifestation is to vomit these old masterpieces. Masterful spittle is our only opportunity to create within the Cinema our masterpieces. That's what Picasso stands for. He is a creator of deglutition and spittle, of old well-digested canvases."

"From the point of view of photography, I'll smite the picture with sun rays. I'll take old stock shots and scratch them; I'll claw at them so that unknown beauty sees the light of day. I shall sculpt flowers upon the film stock."

"There are so many films from which one leaves as stupid as one entered. I'd rather give you a migraine than nothing at all … I'd rather ruin your eyes than leave you indifferent."

"Radio through television becomes a species of Cinema. Why shouldn't Cinema, in turn, become a species of radio?"

"There is no "worst" in what is new. Everything that has existed is bad, or else no one would have improved upon it by revolution and change."

"It is said that the public is stupid. That's why those who hold it in contempt never dare to offer it something original."

"Your hissing and your booing make no impression on me, because from Victor Hugo's "Ernani" to Buñel's "The Age of Gold," Cannes Grand Prize winner, everything I have loved has always been hissed and booed at first. At the premiere of "The Age of Gold" the angry audience broke the theatre seats. What worse can happen to me, and how can that affect me? The seats do not belong to me."

"I desire you, and all that comes with you. If I could only buy you and enjoy you, without having to go through all the formalities, without having to consider your personality et cetera … There is nothing as boring as human personality."

"Old age doth in sharp pains abound; We are belabored by the gout, Our blindness is a dark profound, Our deafness each one laughs about. Then reason's light with falling ray Doth but a trembling flicker cast. Honor to age, ye children pay! Alas! my fifty years are past!"

"Ye Gods! but she is wondrous fair! For me her constant flame appears; The garland she hath culled, I wear On brows bald since my thirty years. Ye veils that deck my loved one rare, Fall, for the crowning triumph's nigh. Ye Gods! but she is wondrous fair! And I, so plain a man am I!"

"In Paris a queer little man you may see, A little man all in gray; Rosy and round as an apple is he, Content with the present whate'er it may be, While from care and from cash he is equally free, And merry both night and day! "Ma foi! I laugh at the world." says he, "I laugh at the world, and the world laughs at me!" What a gay little man in gray."

"Nos amis, les ennemis."

"Quoique leurs chapeaux sont bien laids, Goddam! j'aime les anglais."

"Adieu! 'tis love's last greeting, The parting hour is come! And fast thy soul is fleeting To seek its starry home."

"Ce n'est que lorsqu'il expira Que le peuple, qui l'enterra, pleura."

"Each year his mighty armies marched forth in gallant show, Their enemies were targets, their bullets they were tow."

"Gaily! gaily! close our ranks! Arm! Advance! Hope of France! Gaily! gaily! close our ranks! Onward! Onward! Gauls and Franks!"

"Le sort fait les parents, le choix fait les amis."

"Ici nous ignorons dans quel climat nous sommes ; ici nous ignorons et les lieux et les hommes : des honneurs solennels vous paîront vos bienfaits."

"Modesty is the grace of the soul."

"Fate gives us parents; choice gives us friends."

"J'aime à réver, mais ne veux pas Qu'à coups d'épingle on me réveille."

"Tremblez, tyrans, vous êtes immortels."

"Il ne voit que la nuit, n'entend que le silence."

"Poor, wretched, and stupid peoples, nations determined on your own misfortune and blind to your own good! You let yourselves be deprived before your own eyes of the best part of your revenues; your fields are plundered, your homes robbed, your family heirlooms taken away. You live in such a way that you cannot claim a single thing as your own; and it would seem that you consider yourselves lucky to be loaned your property, your families, and your very lives. All this havoc, this misfortune, this ruin, descends upon you not from alien foes, but from the one enemy whom you yourselves render as powerful as he is, for whom you go bravely to war, for whose greatness you do not refuse to offer your own bodies unto death. He who thus domineers over you has only two eyes, only two hands, only one body, no more than is possessed by the least man among the infinite numbers dwelling in your cities; he has indeed nothing more than the power that you confer upon him to destroy you. Where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you, if you do not provide them yourselves? How can he have so many arms to beat you with, if he does not borrow them from you? The feet that trample down your cities, where does he get them if they are not your own? How does he have any power over you except through you? How would he dare assail you if he had no cooperation from you? What could he do to you if you yourselves did not connive with the thief who plunders you, if you were not accomplices of the murderer who kills you, if you were not traitors to yourselves? You sow your crops in order that he may ravage them, you install and furnish your homes to give him goods to pillage; you rear your daughters that he may gratify his lust; you bring up your children in order that he may confer upon them the greatest privilege he knows — to be led into his battles, to be delivered to butchery, to be made the servants of his greed and the instruments of his vengeance; you yield your bodies unto hard labor in order that he may indulge in his delights and wallow in his filthy pleasures; you weaken yourselves in order to make him the stronger and the mightier to hold you in check."

"Et de tant d'indignités que les bêtes elles-mêmes ne supporteraient pas si elles les sentaient, vous pourriez vous délivrer si vous essayiez, même pas de vous délivrer, seulement de le vouloir."

"Soyez résolus à ne plus servir, et vous voilà libres. Je ne vous demande pas de le pousser, de l'ébranler, mais seulement de ne plus le soutenir, et vous le verrez, tel un grand colosse dont on a brisé la base, fondre sous son poids et se rompre."

"There is in our souls some native seed of reason, which, if nourished by good counsel and training, flowers into virtue, but which, on the other hand, if unable to resist the vices surrounding it, is stifled and blighted."

"The good seed that nature plants in us is so slight and so slippery that it cannot withstand the least harm from wrong nourishment."

"Men are like handsome race horses who first bite the bit and later like it, and rearing under the saddle a while soon learn to enjoy displaying their harness and prance proudly beneath their trappings. Men will grow accustomed to the idea that they have always been in subjection, that their fathers lived in the same way; they will think they are obliged to suffer this evil, and will persuade themselves by example and imitation of others, finally investing those who order them around with proprietary rights, based on the idea that it has always been that way. There are always a few, better endowed than others, who feel the weight of the yoke and cannot restrain themselves from attempting to shake it off: these are the men who never become tamed under subjection and who always, like Ulysses on land and sea constantly seeking the smoke of his chimney, cannot prevent themselves from peering about for their natural privileges and from remembering their ancestors and their former ways. These are in fact the men who, possessed of clear minds and far-sighted spirit, are not satisfied, like the brutish mass, to see only what is at their feet, but rather look about them, behind and before, and even recall the things of the past in order to judge those of the future, and compare both with their present condition. These are the ones who, having good minds of their own, have further trained them by study and learning. Even if liberty had entirely perished from the earth, such men would invent it. For them slavery has no satisfactions, no matter how well disguised."

"The dictator does not consider his power firmly established until he has reached the point where there is no man under him who is of any worth. ... This method tyrants use of stultifying their subjects cannot be more clearly observed than in what Cyrus did with the Lydians after he had taken Sardis, their chief city, and had at his mercy the captured Croesus, their fabulously rich king. When news was brought to him that the people of Sardis had rebelled, it would have been easy for him to reduce them by force; but being unwilling either to sack such a fine city or to maintain an army there to police it, he thought of an unusual expedient for reducing it. He established in it brothels, taverns, and public games, and issued the proclamation that the inhabitants were to enjoy them. He found this type of garrison so effective that he never again had to draw the sword against the Lydians. These wretched people enjoyed themselves inventing all kinds of games, so that the Latins have derived the word from them, and what we call pastimes they call ludi, as if they meant to say Lydi. Not all tyrants have manifested so clearly their intention to effeminize their victims; but in fact, what the aforementioned despot publicly proclaimed and put into effect, most of the others have pursued secretly as an end."

"Do not imagine that there is any bird more easily caught by decoy, nor any fish sooner fixed on the hook by wormy bait, than are all these poor fools neatly tricked into servitude by the slightest feather passed, so to speak, before their mouths. Truly it is a marvelous thing that they let themselves be caught so quickly at the slightest tickling of their fancy. Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects under the yoke, that the stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes, learned subservience as naïvely, but not so creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books."

"Tyrants would distribute largess, a bushel of wheat, a gallon of wine, and a sesterce: and then everybody would shamelessly cry, “Long live the King!” The fools did not realize that they were merely recovering a portion of their own property, and that their ruler could not have given them what they were receiving without having first taken it from them."

"The mob has always behaved in this way—eagerly open to bribes that cannot be honorably accepted, and dissolutely callous to degradation and insult that cannot be honorably endured."

"Ils veulent servir pour amasser des biens: comme s'ils pouvaient rien gagner qui fût à eux, puisqu'ils ne peuvent même pas dire qu'ils sont à eux-mêmes."

"Friendship ... flourishes not so much by kindnesses as by sincerity."

"Friendship ... receives its real sustenance from an equality that, to proceed without a limp, must have its two limbs equal."

"The fundamental political question is why do people obey a government. The answer is that they tend to enslave themselves, to let themselves be governed by tyrants. Freedom from servitude comes not from violent action, but from the refusal to serve. Tyrants fall when the people withdraw their support."

"Modern libertarians know of many great thinkers only because of Murray Rothbard. My favorite in this category is the 16th century anarchist, Étienne de la Boetie. To him, the great mystery of politics was obedience to rulers. Why in the world do people agree to be looted and otherwise oppressed by government overlords? It is not just fear, Boetie explains in “The Discourse on Voluntary Servitude,” for our consent is required. And that consent can be non-violently withdrawn."

"La mort est dans l'adieu d'un ami veritable."

"Poetry is the vision in a man's soul which he translates as best he can with all the means at his disposal."

"Ce sont là jeux de prince: On respecte un moulin: on vole une province."

"Ces malheureux rois, Dont on dit tant de mal, ont du bon quelquefois."

"Il en coûte bien cher pour mourir à Paris."

"Quand il veut, le diable fait tout bien."

"Si nous n’avions pas des juges à Berlin."

"J'aime mieux un franc ennemi Qu'un bon ami qui m'égratigne."

"Secret de Polichinelle."

"Amis, plus souvent qu’on ne croit, La tache est tout juste à l'endroit Où l'on voit briller la paillette."

"Je vais où va toute chose, Où va la feuille de rose Et lafeuille de laurier."

"La cause de notre grandeur Peut l'être aussi de notre parte."

"All poetry is an affair of the body, that is, to be real, it must affect the body."

"We write as we feel, as we think, with our entire body."

"Literary style is the product of the toal phyisology."

"Grace from on high so opportunely purifies the petty human passions."

"Innocence has its instincts, its needs, its physiological dues."

"Time does not live for them, they (girls) live in the absolute. A curious creature. But then all women are curious creatures, girls above all."

"Women are complex, of course not more so than men, but in a different way that men cannot understand."

"Women don't understand themselves and what is more they do not care about understanding."

"Women feel and it suffices to steer them satisfactorily through life as well as to solve problems which leave men utterly helpless. It is only through feelings one can get in contact with them. There is but one way of understanding women and that is to love them."

"Women live entirely in the present, men much more in the future where nature is less well organized."

"Making mental sermons, can spoil delicious moments."

"The decisive gestures in life are almost always the simplest, the most ingenuous."

"Sex is an absinthe whose strength only the strong can stand. In both sexes there are two successive crises, the sexual and the sensual. The first comes at a fixed period … the second generally coincides with the completion of growth. Sometimes, when decline is beginning, a third occurs, which like the first brings with it a condition of sentimentality."

"Art must break the chains, all rules and formulas."

"Instead of copying Nature, we [ Cubists ] create a 'milieu', of our own, wherein our sentiment can work itself out through a juxtaposition of colors. It is hard to explain it, but it may perhaps be illustrated by analogy of literature and music. Your [ Gelett Burgess is American] Edgar Poe did not attempt to reproduce Nature realistically. Some phase of life suggested an emotion, as that of horror in 'The Fall of the House of Ushur'. That subjective idea he translated into art. He made a composition of it."

"So, music does not attempt to imitate Nature's sounds, but it does interpet and embody emotions awakened by Nature through a convention of its own, in a way to be aesthetically pleasing. In some such way, we, taking our hint from Nature, construct decoratively pleasing harmonies and symphonies of color expression of our sentiments."

"Already, a conscious courage is coming to life. Here are some of the painters: Picasso, Georges Braque, Delaunay, Le Fauconnier.. ..they are highly enlightened, and do not believe in the stability of any system, even if it were to call itself classical art.. ..Their reason is poised between the pursuit of the fleeting and a mania for the eternal."

"Cézanne showed us forms living in the reality of light; Picasso gives us a material report of their real life in the mind. He establishes a free, mobile perspective, in such a way that the shrewd mathematician Maurice Princet has deduced an entire geometry."

"It used to be said of a woman: why she's a Velázquez infanta! Now it is said: she's a Renoir blonde! I have no doubt that, in the future, it will be proclaimed: she's as exuberant as a Delaunay, as noble as a Le Fauconnier, as beautiful as a Braque or Picasso."

"To understand Paul Cézanne is to foresee Cubism. Henceforth we are justified in saying that between this school and previous manifestations there is only a difference of intensity, and that in order to assure ourselves of this we have only to study the methods of this realism, which, departing from the superficial reality of Courbet, plunges with Cézanne into profound reality, growing luminous as it forces the unknowable to retreat."

"Some maintain that such a tendency distorts the curve of tradition. Do they derive their arguments from the future or the past? The future does not belong to them, as far as we are aware, and one be singularly ingenuous to seek to measure that which exists by that which exists no longer."

"Unless we are to condemn all modern painting, we must regard cubism as legitimate, for it continues modern methods, and we should see in it the only conception of pictorial art now possible. In other words, at this moment cubism is painting."

"Let the picture imitate nothing; let it nakedly present its raison d'être. We should indeed be ungrateful were we to deplore the absence of all those things flowers, or landscape, or faces whose mere reflection it might have been. Nevertheless, let us admit that the reminiscence of natural forms cannot be absolutely banished; not yet, at all events. An art cannot be raised to the level of a pure effusion at the first step."

"If we wished to relate the space of the [Cubist] painters to geometry, we should have to refer it to the non-Euclidean mathematicians; we should have to study, at some length, certain of Riemann's theorems."

"We do not mechanically connect the sensation of white with the idea of light, any more than we connect the sensation of black with the idea of darkness. We admit that a black jewel, even if of a dead black, may be more luminous than the white or pink satin of its case. Loving light, we refuse to measure it, and we avoid the geometrical ideas of the focus and the ray, which imply the repetition-contrary to the principle of variety which guides us-of bright planes and sombre intervals in a given direction. Loving colour, we refuse to limit it, and subdued or dazzling, fresh or muddy, we accept all the possibilities contained between the two extreme points of the spectrum, between the cold and the warm tone."

"We are frankly amused to think that many a novice may perhaps pay for his too literal comprehension of the remarks of one cubist, and his faith in the existence of an Absolute Truth, by painfully juxtaposing the six faces of a cube or the two ears of a model seen in profile."

"But we cannot enjoy in isolation; we wish to dazzle others with that which we daily snatch from the world of sense, and in return we wish others to show us their trophies. From a reciprocity of concessions arise those mixed images, which we hasten to confront with artistic creations in order to compute what they contain of the objective; that is of the purely conventional."

"I sought refuge in my schoolbooks, among the flowers of Greek poetry, or the magical figures of geometry."

"This science gave me a taste for the arts. It is Number that gives value to sounds and silences, lights and shadows, forms and spaces. Michelangelo and Bach seemed to me like divine mathematicians [calculateurs]. Already I felt that only mathematics enables works that can last. Whether as a result of patient study, or of a stormy [fulgurante] intuition, number alone can reduce all our diversities of feeling to the strict unity of a mass, a fresco, or a sculpted head."

"The house was filled with the piano and violin. I turned towards the art of painting."

"My conviction was justified: art, that which lasts, is based on mathematics."

"Nearly conscious in someone like Michelangelo, or Paolo Uccello, quite intuitive in painters such as Ingres, or Corot, it works on the basis of numbers which belong to the painting itself, not to whatever it represents."

"I learned that Cézanne's success was not preventing the Neo-Impressionists from getting support. My knowledge of their technique was entirely literary."

"Often we were joined by Maurice Princet. Although very young, he held an important post in an insurance company which he owed to his knowledge of mathematics. But outside his profession it was as an artist that he thought of mathematics, as a specialist in aesthetics that he evoked continuities in n dimensions. He liked to interest painters in the new visions of space that had been opened up by Victor Schlegel and several others. He succeeded. After having heard him by chance, Henri Matisse was caught reading an essay on hyperspace. Oh! it was only a potboiler [un ouvrage de vulgarisation]! but at least that shows that for the great 'fauve' the days of the painter who knows nothing, who runs towards a pretty subject with his beard blowing in the wind, was passed."

"As for Picasso, the specialist was amazed by the rapidity of his understanding. The tradition he came from had prepared him better than ours for a problem to do with structure. And Berthe Weil was right when she treated those who compared him/confused him with, a Steinlen or a Lautrec as idiots. He had already rejected them in their own century, a century we had no intention of prolonging. Whether or not the Universe was endowed with another dimension, art was going to move into a different field."

"Art belongs to the domain of the unreal and it is only when people try to make a reality of it that it falls apart."

"I wanted an art that was faithful to itself [loyal] and would have nothing to do with the business of creating illusions. I dreamed of painting glasses from which no-one would ever think of drinking, beaches that would be quite unsuitable for bathing, nudes who would be definitively chaste. I wanted an art which in the first place would appear as a representation of the impossible."

"It should be said that such an art would be neither more false nor more true than classical art."

"Albert Gleizes did not know Montmartre, had never seen anything of Picasso or Juan Gris, never heard Maurice Princet construct an infinite number of different spaces for the use of painters, but he described to me the absurdity of the museums in which mournful, extravagantly three dimensional crowds threaten to crush the visitor by jumping out of their frames."

""What madman, or what clever-dick with the instincts of a counterfeiter was the first to paint a sphere in trompe l'oeil on a surface that is vertical and rigorously flat! And that's what they teach at the Beaux-Arts [academy]! How could such idiocies ever have survived the verdict of Pascal?" [quote of Albert Gleizes ]. That was how, in 1906, Albert Gleizes was feeling his way towards Cubism and condemned in advance those who never saw anything in it other than a shibboleth [mot d'ordre]. It was still nothing more than a need he felt, the need not for an intellectual art but for an art that would be something other than a systematic absurdity. Quite clearly nature and the painting make up two different worlds which have nothing in common, and what is quite in its place in the one cannot also be in its place in the other."

"The excuse that the painters were documenting reality was becoming ridiculous. Photographers and film makers went far beyond them. Already it could be said that a good portrait led one to think about the painter not the model."

"Gleizes was only trying to reduce the curvature of natural volumes to adapt them more naturally and rigorously to the surface of the painting, a surface which he believed to be continuous with the wall and, for all practical purposes, with no curvature at all."

"I had measured the difference that separated art prior to 1900 from the art which I felt was being born. I knew that all instruction was at an end. The age of personal expression had finally begun. The value of an artist was no longer to be judged by the finish of his execution, or by the analogies his work suggested with such-and-such an archetype. It would be judged – exclusively – by what distinguished this artist from all the others. The age of the master and pupil was finally over; I could see about me only a handful of creators and whole colonies of monkeys. But I could not ask Gleizes to see it that way. Happily, nothing of his social or mystical opinions remained when he was engaged in the work of painting. The work of reconciling an oval and a lozenge, a yellow and a blue, prevailed and saved him."

"For the image possesses qualities which, under certain circumstances, can make it much more interesting than the object which inspired it. The portrait of a commonplace person can astound us with an air of distinction, reminding us that the best portrait is that which resembles the painter, not the model."

"We could not think of going back to the symbolic measures of the ancients and the primitives. Such cheap magician's tricks did not appeal to us."

"Whether it is Juan Gris taking objects apart, Picasso replacing them with objects of his own invention, or another who replaces conical perspective by a system based on the relations between perpendiculars, all that only goes to show that Cubism was not at all born out of an authoritative theory [mot d'ordre]; that it only marked among a few painters the will to be finished with an art that never ought to have survived the condemnation pronounced upon it by Pascal."

"In fact it is a stupidity, Maurice Princet told me in the presence of Juan Gris, to claim to be able to bring together in a single system of relations, colour, which is a sensation that only needs to be received, and form which is an organisation that has to be understood (14); and, introducing us to the non-Euclidean geometries, he urged us to create a geometry for painters."

"We could not do it in the way he meant. But from the Rue Lamarck to the Rue Ravignan, the attempt [prétention] to imitate an orb on a vertical plane, or to indicate by a horizontal straight line the circular hole of a vase placed at the height of the eyes was considered as the artifice of an illusionistic trickery that belonged to another age."

"Cubism was born."

"Behold a universe so immense that I am lost in it. I no longer know where I am. I am just nothing at all. Our world is terrifying in its insignificance."

"The calculus is to mathematics no more than what experiment is to physics, and all the truths produced solely by the calculus can be treated as truths of experiment. The sciences must proceed to first causes, above all mathematics where one cannot assume, as in physics, principles that are unknown to us. For there is in mathematics, so to speak, only what we have placed there... If, however, mathematics always has some essential obscurity that one cannot dissipate, it will lie, uniquely, I think, in the direction of the infinite; it is in that direction that mathematics touches on physics, on the innermost nature of bodies about which we know little."

"The geometrical spirit is not so tied to geometry that it cannot be detached from it and transported to other branches of knowledge. A work of morals or politics or criticism, perhaps even of eloquence, would be better (other things being equal) if it were done in the style of a geometer. The order, clarity, precision and exactitude which have been apparent in good books for some time might well have their source in this geometric spirit. ...Sometimes one great man gives the tone to a whole century; Descartes], to whom one might legitimately be accorded the glory of having established a new art of reasoning, was an excellent geometer."

"At the time the book of Marquis de l'Hôpital had appeared, and almost all mathematicians began to turn to the new geometry of the infinite [that is, the new infinitesimal calculus], until then little known. The surprising universality of the methods, the elegant brevity of the proofs, the neatness and speed of the most difficult solutions, a singular and unexpected novelty, all attracted the mind and there was in the mathematical world a well marked revolution [une révolution bien marquée."

"Men are not willing to suffer the decision of things to be too easie, and therefore they mingle their own prejudices with truths, and so create greater perplexities than are Naturally found therein; and those scruples, which our selves frame, give us the most pain to untangle."

"It is more reasonable to remove error from truth, than to venerate error because it is mix'd with truth."

"We can never add more truth to what is true already, nor make that true which is false."

"But why then did the Ancient Priestesses always answer in Verse? ...To this Plutarch replies... That even the Ancient Priestesses did now and then speak in Prose. And besides this, in Old times all People were born Poets. ...[T]hey had no sooner drank a little freely, but they made Verses; they had no sooner cast their eyes on a Handsom Woman, but they were all Poesy, and their very common discourse fell naturally into Feet and Rhime: So that their Feasts and their Courtships were the most delectable things in the World. But now this Poetick Genius has deserted Mankind: and tho' our passions be as ardent... yet Love at present creeps in humble prose. ...Plutarch gives us another reason ...that the Ancients wrote always in Verse, whether they treated of Religion, Morality, Natural Philosophy or Astrology. Orpheus and Hesiod, whom every body acknowledges for Poets, were Philosophers also: and Parmenides, Xenophanes, Empedocles, Eudoxus, and Thales... [the] Philosophers, were Poets too. It is very strange indeed that Poetry should be elder Brother to Prose... but it is very probable... precepts... were shap'd into measured lines, that they might be the more easily remembred: and therefore all their Laws and their rules of Morality were in Verse. By this we may see that Poetry had a much more serious beginning than is usually imagin'd, and that the Muses have of late days mightily deviated from their original Gravity."

"Now, the Priests who belonged to the Temples, scorn'd to use the same Customs in common with these Gypsies; for they thought themselves to be a nobler and graver sort of Fortune-tellers; which makes a mighty difference, I'll assure you, in this great affair."

"[A]bout the time of Alexander the Great, a little before Pyrrhus's days, there appear'd in Greece certain great Sects of Philosophers, such as the Peripateticks and Epicureans, who made a mock of Oracles. The Epicureans especially made sport with the paltry Poetry that came from Delphos. For the Priests hammered out their Verses as well as they could, and they often times committed faults against the common Rules of Prosodia. Now those Fleering Philosophers were mightily concerned that Apollo, the very God of Poetry, should come so far behind Homer, who was but a meer mortal, and was beholding to the same Apollo for his inspirations."

"It was to little purpose to excuse the matter, by saying, that the badness of the Verses was a kind of Testimony that they were made by a God, who nobly scorn'd to be tyed up to rules and to be confined to the Beauty of a Style. For this made no impression upon the Philosophers; who, to turn this answer into ridicule, compared it to the Story of a Painter, who being hired to draw the Picture of a Horse tumbling on his Back upon the ground, drew one running full speed: and when he was told, that this was not such a Picture as was bespoke, he turned it upside down, and then ask'd if the Horse did not tumble upon his back now. Thus these Philosophers jeered such Persons, who by a way of arguing that would serve both ways, could equally prove that the Verses were made by a God, whether they were good or bad."

"So that at length the Priests of Delphos being quite baffled with the railleries of those learned Wits, renounced all Verses, at least as to the speaking them from the Tripos; for there were still some Poets maintain'd in the Temple, who at leisure turned into Verse, what the Divine fury had inspired the Pythian Priestess withal in Prose. It was very pretty, that Men could not be contented to take the Oracle just as it came piping hot from the Mouth of their God. But perhaps, when they had come a great way for it, they thought it would look silly to carry home an Oracle in Prose."

"[T]he intellectual changes of Louis XIV's reign touch the history of science—especially as they represent the extension of the scientific method into other realms of thought. ...we meet the beginnings of the criticism of the French monarchy... acute criticism from... the French intelligentsia who could claim to understand the... state better than the king himself. ...The funeral orations of Fontenelle call attention to an aspect of this movement... [i.e.,] the initial effect of the new scientific movement on political thought. ...The first result ...as Fontenelle makes clear, was the insistence that politics requires the inductive method, the collection of information, the accumulation of concrete data and statistics. ...He describes ...how Vauban... travelled over France, accumulating data, seeing the condition[s]... for himself, studying commerce and the possibilities of commerce... gaining a knowledge of local conditions. Vauban, says Fontenelle, did more than anybody else to call mathematics out of the skies... [he] put statistics to the service of modern political economy and first applied the rational and experimental method in matters of finance. ...Fontenelle tells us that ...Sir , the author of Political Arithmetic, showed how much of the knowledge requisite for government reduces itself to mathematical calculation."

"Fontenelle provides an example of the transfer of the scientific spirit, and the application of methodical doubt, in... the History of Oracles. In a sense he is one of the predursors of the comparative method in the history of religion—the collection of myths of all lands to throw light on the development of human reason. ...he recommends the study of primitive tribes in our own day ...He treats myths as... a natural product, subject to scientific analysis—not the fruits of conscious imposture but the characteristic of a certain stage in human development. The human mind he regards as... the same in all times and ages, but subject to local influences... Here is a self-conscious attempt to show how the scientific method could receive extended application and could be transferred from the examination of purely material phenomena even into... human studies."

"His wit, his Learning, his Knowledge of Mankind, his exquisite Taste in all that is Polite, the Fire of his Imagination, the uncommon Felicity of his Eloquence, and the ready Turn of his Expression, are Reasons which the Publick will think very natural to direct me in this Address to Your Lordship."

"A mere nothing, a tiny fibre, something that could never be found by the most delicate anatomy, would have made of Erasmus and Fontenelle two idiots, and Fontenelle himself speaks of this very fact in one of his best dialogues."

"In principle, should the laborers have the produce of their labor? I do not hesitate to say: No! although I know that a multitude of workers will cry out. Look, proletarians, cry out, shout as much as you like, but then listen to me: No, it is not the product of their labors to which the workers have a right. It is the satisfaction of their needs, whatever the nature of those needs. To have the possession of the product of our labor is not to have possession of that which is proper to us, it is to have property in a product made by our hands, and which could be proper to others and not to us. And isn’t all property theft?"

"A little stallion gallops across the leafing fingers- Black the gate leaps open, I sing; How did we live here?"

"Aspen tree, your leaves glance white into the dark."

"We stand by the window embracing, and people look up from the street: it is time they knew! It is time the stone made an effort to flower, time unrest had a beating heart. It is time it were time.It is time."

"You opened your eyes -I saw my darkness live. I see through it down to the bed; there too it is mine and lives."

"Am I not the poet of witness? Am I not a disciple of Nellie Sachs and Paul Celan trying to describe the horrors of the Holocaust, meanwhile inventing a new lyric, which questions the possibility/impossibility of poetry after the most heinous episodes of history?"

"I replace melancholy by courage, doubt by certainty, despair by hope, malice by good, complaints by duty, scepticism by faith, sophisms by cool equanimity and pride by modesty."

"God grant that the reader, emboldened and having become at present as fierce as what he is reading, find, without loss of bearings, his way, his wild and treacherous passage through the desolate swamps of these sombre, poison-soaked pages; for, unless he should bring to his reading a rigorous logic and a sustained mental effort at least as strong as his distrust, the lethal fumes of this book shall dissolve his soul as water does sugar."

"I hail you, old ocean! Old ocean, you are the symbol of identity: always equal unto yourself. In essence, you never change, and if somewhere your waves are enraged, farther off in some other zone they are in the most complete calm. You are not like man — who stops in the street to see two bulldogs seize each other by the scruff of the neck, but does not stop when a funeral passes. Man who in the morning is affable and in the evening ill-humoured. Who laughs today and weeps tomorrow. I hail you, old ocean!"

"There are those whose purpose in writing is, by means of the noble qualities of heart which their imagination invents or which they themselves may have, to seek the plaudits of other human beings. For my part, I use my genius to depict the delights of cruelty: delights which are not transitory or artificial; but which began with man and will end with him. Cannot genius be allied with cruelty in the secret resolutions of Providence? Or can one, being cruel, not have genius?"

"Farewell until eternity, where you and I shall not find ourselves together."

"After some hours, the dogs, exhausted by running round, almost dead, their tongues hanging out, set upon one another and, not knowing what they are doing, tear one another into thousands of pieces with incredible rapidity. Yet they do not do this out of cruelty."

"I will leave no memoirs."

"I spent the first ten years of my life in Germany, the following ten in Paris, the following ten between Argentine and Uruguay."

"We are too many to live, but never enough to suffer and die."

"We are all guilty of existing; Gnosis admits that life is a burden and that the salvation of the species lies in chastity, resulting in universal extinction. Jesus — the real Jesus, not the one of the Catholic Church — expressed a similar sentiment when, as some fragments of the Apocryphal Gospels show, he wished that life would cease in order for misery to end, and that he praised a woman named Salome for being sterile, declaring to her that he came for destroying the opera of the women. These are a couple of rational statements that every reasonable man should adopt, but since the majority is neither reasonable nor sensible, new abortions will be raised in misery, shame, disease, and filth."

"Death is not terrible, life is terrible, but we see things literally and figuratively upside down. The philosopher is the one who puts everything back in its proper place."

"If the fornicators sin, those who impregnate sin a hundred times more."

"The fact that we suffer doesn't necessarily imply that pain is meaningful; quite the contrary! It's always pointless to endure pain, but our vanity refuses to admit it, and therefore builds castles in the air to amuse itself with illusions, which is also called metaphysics."

"Pessimism has never been in fashion because no order could stand it; it's a luxury of the mind, and thus beyond the reach of the common man."

"Every child believes in its parents: that seems to be the first mistake, for they are usually not gods but ordinary people, and a child will never reach manhood unless it sees through this deception. The free man must be unfaithful to his roots; otherwise, he becomes a servant."

"I would be pleased indeed, if the universe were full of blazing ovens, concentration camps, and people deported."

"My entire existence is a methodical "NO”."

"Who are the most wicked of men? It's the optimists."

"For me, nothingness has a charm that the abortions that populate this place could never have and never will have. I thank heaven that I live here; leaving this world doesn't take any effort."

"If I had to live my life over again, I wouldn't change a thing. I fully approve of what I've done, and I'm immensely proud of myself. It's life itself that I despise, not my existence; it's the principle, not its application, that couldn't have been better, given the circumstances."

"It's because life itself is inhuman that men are not human."

"According to Gnosis, the universe is the prison of the species and is virtually embraced by fate, which is reminiscent of Sartre despite all the differences in expression. We enter the world through a gate that requires no explanation: we are the outcasts of women. We emerge from the womb and are thrust into something we didn't choose, which is essentially Heidegger's concept of thrownness. Our mothers cast us into the world, and we awaken as prisoners. When our eyes open, we find ourselves in chains. Our existence is like Plato's cave, where we perceive only the shadows of things."

"French, German, English and Spanish are four admirable languages and I manage to express myself in all of them with more or less skill."

"I don't hide my profession of pessimism and I'm an avowed partisan of reaction."

"The educated reader knows, as he reads me, that he is listening to a fugue in four voices."

"I was born to myself between 1946 and 1948, I then opened my eyes on the world, until that moment I have been blind."

"Imagine a world in which thirty billion humans would live like the people in Asia, cramped into a few cities the size of France, with hundred-story buildings containing a hundred thousand rooms, where water runs for only two hours a day. Most of them would be born, live, and die in ten-unit structures, breathing air supplied by machines and consuming rather unappetizing food made of algae, cellulose, or even insects. Is it any wonder that some feel the urge to destroy everything, if only to avoid a nightmare that has now become inevitable?"

"Happiness rarely leads us to intellectual adventures. Writers and artists, not to mention philosophers, are usually dissatisfied with themselves or the world."

"The older I grow, the more Gnosis speaks to my reason: the world is not ruled by a Providence, it's intrinsically evil and deeply absurd, and Creation is either the dream of blind intelligence or the game of a principle without a moral."

"The few truths contained in the so-called Catholic faith lead us back to Gnosticism, which is a precise description of universal misery and absurdity, literally doubling its weight with death. In the light of Gnosis, we rediscover in Existentialism the abandonment and confinement of man: he is left alone, chained, and walks among the crowd under the closed vault of destiny, prey to loneliness and finitude. He discovers that he did not choose the suffering he has to endure, that he was just there, nothing else, and that he cannot transcend this situation since it is part of his essence."

"In every saint there lurks an arrant knave, the marrow of all holiness being absolute hellishness. That's why our Saviors are of no avail, their remedies being too strong for the common man, who is the puppet of his fleshly appetite and not a sinner."

"Great heed has to be taken about the fact that most of us desire to remain unconscious: felicity (in eyes of common man) is rapture and rapture seems a quenching of awareness reduced to the awareness of its obliteration... Sex and Religion are centred on it both and I dare say that their convenience will in future be to join instead of rivalling, as they are wont to do, obscenity will be religious as it was long ago."

"Our moral ideas are not transcendent, our moral ideas are historical and History obeys to changing Aions, we feel that ours is fading and no authority can enforce confidence rooted in what no power includes : in Sensibility itself. To every Aion a new Sensibility adheres and to each Sensibility another Aion is related, sin is nowhere, we only see abuse and worst among abuses, the delusion of sin as such."

"Most of us live betwixt quiet despair and furious nihilism."

"I am a racist and a colonialist."

"Our most terrifying fears and our innermost secret desires for extermination are reflected in this elegant and profound book, without any sort of leniency to attenuate the disgust and hopelessness we feel when faced with a humanity constantly atrophied by a series of values and practices that lead to chaos."

"We strive towards death like an arrow towards its target, and we never miss. Death is our only certainty, and we always know that we will die, no matter where, when, or how. The idea of eternal life is nonsense, eternity is not life, death is the rest we seek, life and death are intertwined, and those who demand something else ask for the impossible and will earn nothing but smoke."

"We, who are not satisfied with empty words, consent to disappear, and we rejoice in our fate. We didn't choose to be born, and consider ourselves fortunate to have nowhere to outlive this life, which was imposed upon us rather than given — a life full of sorrows and pains with dubious or harmful pleasures."

"The cities we inhabit are schools of death because they are inhuman. Each has become a den of noise and stench. Each has become a chaos of buildings where we amass ourselves by the millions, losing our life's purpose. Unfortunates, with no escape, we feel that we have put ourselves, willingly or not, in the labyrinth of the absurd, from which we will only emerge dead, for our destiny is to multiply without end, only to perish in great numbers. With each turn of the wheel, the cities we inhabit advance imperceptibly towards each other, aspiring to merge into an absolute chaos of noise and stench. With each turn of the wheel, the price of land rises, and in the labyrinth that devours free space, the revenue from investments builds hundreds of walls, day after day. Since money must work and the cities we inhabit must progress, it's still legitimate for their houses to double in height with each generation, even if they lack water every two days. The builders only seek to escape the fate they are preparing for us by fleeing to the countryside."

"Since order is not infallible, it is up to war to one day remedy its faults, and as order continues to multiply them, we are heading towards war; war and the future seem inseparable. This is the only certainty: death is, in a word, the meaning of everything, and man is but a thing in the face of death, as are nations. History is a passion, and its victims are legion. The world we live in is hell moderated by nothingness, where man, refusing to know himself, prefers to sacrifice himself like an animal species that has become too numerous - similar to swarms of locusts and armies of rats - believing that it is more sublime to perish, to perish innumerable times, than to finally reconsider the world he inhabits."

"We live for death, love for death, and give birth and toil for death. Our works and days now follow one another in the shadow of death. The discipline we adhere to, the values we uphold, and the plans we make all lead to one end: death."

"Evil desires men to multiply, for the more men there are, the less they are worth. To be truly human, man will never be rare enough."

"Life is no longer sacred from the moment the living become too numerous. The lives of surplus men are no more valuable than those of insects, and soldiers killed in war are no different in the eyes of those who command them."

"Our days and nights Have sorrows woven with delights."

"To will what God doth will, that is the only science That gives us any rest."

"Mais elle était du monde, où les plus belles choses Ont le pire destin; Et Rose, elle a vécu ce que vivent les roses, L'espace d'un matin."

"A third equivalent of duty is borrowed from sensibility and not, like the preceding, from intelligence and activity. It’s the growing fusion of sensibilities, and the ever increasing sociable character of elevated pleasures, from which results a kind of duty or superior necessity which pushes us naturally and rationally towards others. By virtue of evolution, our pleasures grow and become increasingly impersonal; we cannot experience enjoyment within our selves as if on a deserted isle. Our milieu, to which we better adapt ourselves every day, is human society, and we can no more be happy outside of this milieu than we can breathe outside the air. The purely selfish happiness of certain Epicureans is a chimera, an abstraction, an impossibility; the true human pleasures are all more or less social. Pure egoism, rather than being an affirmation of the self, is a mutilation of the self."

"A child saw a butterfly poised on a blade of grass; the butterfly had been made numb by the north wind. The child plucked the blade of grass, and the living flower that was at its tip, still numb, remained attached. He returned home, holding his find in his hand. A ray of sunlight broke through, striking the butterfly’s wing, and suddenly, revived and light, the living flower flew away into the glare. All of us, scholars and workers, we are like the butterfly: our strength is made of a ray of light. Not even: of the hope of a ray. One must thus know how to hope; hope is what carries us higher and farther. “But it’s an illusion!” What do you know of this? Should we not take a step for fear that one day the earth will slide away from under our feet? Looking far into the past or the future is not the only thing; one must look into oneself. One must see there the living forces that demand to be expended, and we must act."

"We can judge ourselves and our ideal by posing this question: For what idea, for what person would I be ready to risk my life? He who cannot answer such a question has a vulgar and empty heart. He is incapable of feeling or doing anything grand in life, since he is unable to go beyond his individuality. He is impotent and sterile, dragging along his selfish ego like the tortoise its shell. On the contrary, he who has present in his spirit the idea of death for his ideal seeks to maintain this ideal at the height of this possible sacrifice. He draws from this supreme risk a constant tension and an indefatigable energy of the will. The only means of being great in life is having the consciousness that you will not retreat before death."

"Guyau places at the basis of his ethics the conception of life in the broadest sense of the word. Life manifests itself in growth, in multiplication, in spreading. Ethics, according to Guyau, should be a teaching about the means through which Nature's special aim is attained, -the growth and the development of life. The moral element in man needs, therefore, no coercion, no compulsory obligation, no sanction from above; it develops in us by virtue of the very need of man to live a full, intensive, productive life. Man is not content with ordinary, commonplace existence; he seeks the opportunity to extend its limits, to accelerate its tempo, to fill it with varied impressions and emotional experiences. And as long as he feels in himself the ability to attain this end he will not wait for any coercion or command from without. "Duty," says Guyau, is "the consciousness of a certain inward power, by nature superior to all other powers. To feel inwardly the greatest that one is capable of doing is really the first consciousness of what it is one's duty to do.""

"Tu seras invendable à perpétuité, l'Invendable, dans tes livres aussi bien que dans ta personne, et ainsi se réalisera tout à fait la séparation, naturellement désirée par toi, d'avec les vendeurs et les gens à vendre."

"Woe to him who has not begged! There is nothing more exalted than to beg. God begs. The Angels beg. Kings, Prophets, and Saints beg."

"Ah! The happy ones of this world who are assured their daily bread&mdash;that is, all the things necessary to bodily life&mdash;and who, not wishing to know Jesus, have never for one single instant had the idea of suffering for their brothers, of sacrificing themselves for the wretched: ah! indeed! such people are assuredly well qualified to judge me and to reproach me for not having what the world calls dignity!"

"My anger is the effervescence of my pity."

"Unhappy writer, you had dreamt of winning souls and you have won nothing but ears!"

"You had hoped that the beloved and noble images flowing from your heart would serve as a river to carry to God many another heart! But, as you see, people are afraid of getting wet."

"One sees the world's evil accurately only by exaggerating it."

"A perfectly true thought, expressed in very sound terms, can satisfy the reason without giving any impression of the Beautiful; but in that case certainly there is something false in its statement. It is essential that Truth be in Glory. Splendor of style is not a luxury. It is a necessity."

"Of course the avaricious man of our day, be he landlord, merchant, industrialist, does not adore sacks of coins or bundles of banknotes in some little chapel and upon some little altar. He does not kneel before these spoils of other men, nor does he address prayers or canticles to them amidst odorous clouds of incense. But he proclaims that money is the only good, and he yields it all his soul. A cult sincere, without hypocrisy, never growing weary, never forsworn. Whenever he says, in the debasement of his heart and his speech, that he loves money for the delights it can purchase, he lies or he terribly deceives himself, this very assertion being belied at the very moment he utters it by every one of his acts, by the infinite toil and pains to which he gladly condemns himself in order to acquire or conserve that money which is but the visible figure of the Blood of Christ circulating throughout all His members."

"Of the truths which embarrass him he thinks it better to remain unaware."

"The Bourgeois who has religious feelings sees very clearly the absolute necessity of serving two masters at the same time in order to achieve success in his business, which naturally comes before everything else."

"I see from time to time coins that are tinted with red, having been handled by a butcher or a murderer, and the sight of that money makes me wonder. As I think about the probable origin of that sign of wealth, I tell myself that that is indeed its true color, the color which it should, which it must have, the color that was doubtless taken on by Judas’s pieces of silver, after which he ceased to recognize them and returned them at once to the egregious scoundrels who had given them to him. These, not recognizing the pieces themselves, did not want to return to the treasury of the Temple money so strange in its color. Everyone knows they used it to buy the field of blood, a generic name which I imagine can be applied to all bourgeois holdings ever since the Scourging and Crucifixion of Jesus Christ."

"The rich have a horror of Poverty because they have a dim foreboding of the expiatory interchange implied by her presence."

"The exercise of freedom consists in stripping oneself of one's own will."

"You are always on the right side when you are with those who suffer persecution and injustice."

"Any Christian who is not a hero is a pig."

"There is only one tragedy in the end, not to have been a saint."

"The worst thing is not to commit crimes but, rather, not to accomplish the good that one could have done. It is the sin of omission, which is nothing other than to be unloving, and no one accuses himself of it."

"Suffering passes, but the fact of having suffered never passes."

"It is the small flock of God. "Whoever receives in my name one of those little" said Jesus, "It is myself who receives." What thinks the one that sticks, that maims, or inflicts to their pure souls more black sorrow than death? (...) The curse of a crowd of children, is a cataclysm, a horror prodigy, a chain of dark mountains in the sky, with a cavalcade of thunder and lightning in their tops. It is the infinite of the cries of all deep, is a not know what highly powerful unforgiving and extinguishing any hope of forgiveness."

"Love does not make you weak, because it is the source of all strength, but it makes you see the nothingness of the illusory strength on which you depended before you knew it."

"Whoever does not pray to God, prays to the devil."

"My secret," he would say to me, "consists in loving with my whole soul, to the point of giving my life for them, the souls called to read me some day."

"Bloy ... believed that those who are wealthy and who keep their wealth for themselves even as the poor continue to suffer and perish, are in God's eyes the murderers of their brothers and sisters."

"His violence was the obverse of a charity lashed by incomparable storms, which had reached the end of its patience."

"Instead of being a whited sepulchre like the Pharisees of all times, he was a charred blackened cathedral."

"Nul n'est content de sa fortune; Ni mécontent de son esprit."

"I have heard much of these languishing lovers, but I never yet saw one of them die for love."

"To me it seems much better to love a woman as a woman, than to make her one's idol, as many do. For my part, I am convinced that it is better to use than to abuse."

"No one ever perfectly loved God who did not perfectly love some of his creatures in this world."

"Un malheureux cherche l'autre."

"He who knows his own incapacity, knows something, after all."

"Man is wise ... when he recognises no greater enemy than himself."

"God always helps madmen, lovers, and drunkards."

"Mariage est un état de si longue durée, qu'il ne doit être commencé légèrement, ne sans l'opinion de nos meilleurs amis et parents."

"When one has one good day in the year, one is not wholly unfortunate."

"Blessed, unquestionably, is he who has it in his power to do evil, yet does it not."

"Though jealousy be produced by love as ashes are by fire, yet jealousy extinguishes love, as ashes smother the flame."

"I never knew a mocker who was not mocked, ... a deceiver who was not deceived, or a proud man who was not humbled."

"Ilz font semblant de n'aymer poinct les raisins quand ilz sont si haults, qu'ilz ne les peuvent cueillir."

"Some there are who are much more ashamed of confessing a sin than of committing it."

"The less one sees and knows men, the higher one esteems them; for experience teaches their real value."

"There are few husbands whom the wife can not win in the long run by patience and love, unless they are harder than the rocks which the soft water penetrates in time."

"The more hidden the venom, the more dangerous it is."

"We are always more disposed to laugh at nonsense than at genuine wit; because the nonsense is more agreeable to us, being more comformable to our own natures: fools love folly, and wise men wisdom."

"There is no greater fool than he who thinks himself wise; no one wiser than he who suspects he is a fool."

"There is in us more of the appearance of sense and of virtue than of the reality."

"The virtuous action, done for virtue's sake alone, is truly laudable."

"Men are so accustomed to lie, that one can not take too many precautions before trusting them — if they are to be trusted at all."

"Love works miracles every day: such as weakening the strong, and strengthening the weak; making fools of the wise, and wise men of fools; favoring the passions, destroying reason, and, in a word, turning everything topsy-turvy."

"He who knows his incapacity, knows something."

"The woman who does not choose to love should cut the matter short at once, by holding out no hopes to her suitor."

"Extreme concupiscence may be found under an extreme austerity."

"Hypocrites are wicked: they hide their defects with so much care, that their hearts are poisoned by them."

"We shall all be perfectly virtuous when there is no longer any flesh on our bones."

"I confess I should be glad if my pleasures were as pleasing to God as they are to me: in that case, I should often find matter for rejoicing."

"It is difficult to repent of what gives us pleasure."

"No one perfectly loves God who does not perfectly love some of his creatures."

"In love, as in war, a fortress that parleys is half taken."

"Pleasures are sins: we regret to offend God; but, then, pleasures please us."

"The true and the false speak the same language."

"A woman of honor should never suspect another of things she would not do herself."

"Since love teaches how to trick the tricksters, how much reason have we to fear it — we who are poor simple creatures!"

"Many weep for the sin, while they laugh over the pleasure."

"There are women so hard to please that it seems as if nothing less than an angel will suit them: hence it comes that they often meet with devils."

"God has put into the heart of man love and the boldness to sue, and into the heart of woman fear and the courage to refuse."

"Love is a disease that kills nobody, but one whose time has come."

"The principal themes of the [Heptaméron] are rape, seductions bordering on rape, incest and numerous infringements of the sex and marriage codes of aristocratic Europe."

"The first modern woman."

"My mouth shall be the mouth of those calamities that have no mouth, my voice the freedom of those who break down in the prison holes of despair."

"Beware of assuming the sterile attitude of a spectator, for life is not a spectacle, a sea of miseries is not a proscenium, a man screaming is not a dancing bear."

"What, fundamentally, is colonization? To agree on what it is not: neither evangelization, nor a philanthropic enterprise, nor a desire to push back the frontiers of ignorance, disease, and tyranny, nor a project undertaken for the greater glory of God, nor an attempt to extend the rule of law. To admit once for all, without flinching at the consequences, that the decisive actors here are the adventurer and the pirate, the wholesale grocer and the ship owner, the gold digger and the merchant, appetite and force, and behind them, the baleful projected shadow of a form of civilization which, at a certain point in its history, finds itself obliged, for internal reasons, to extend to a world scale the competition of its antagonistic economies."

"First we must study how colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism; and we must show that each time a head is cut off or an eye put out in Vietnam and in France they accept the fact, each time a little girl is raped and in France they accept the fact, each time a Madagascan is tortured and in France they accept the fact, civilization acquires another dead weight, a universal regression takes place, a gangrene sets in, a center of infection begins to spread; and that at the end of all these treaties that have been violated, all these lies that have been propagated, all these punitive expeditions that have been tolerated, all these prisoners who have been tied up and interrogated, all these patriots who have been tortured, at the end of all the racial pride that has been encouraged, all the boastfulness that has been displayed, a poison has been instilled into the veins of Europe and, slowly but surely, the continent proceeds toward savagery. And then one fine day the bourgeoisie is awakened by a terrific reverse shock: the gestapos are busy, the prisons fill up, the torturers around the racks invent, refine, discuss.People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: “How strange! But never mind — it’s Nazism, it will pass!” And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, but the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it."

"What he cannot forgive Hitler for is not crime in itself, the crime against man, it is not the humiliation of man as such, it is the crime against the white man, the humiliation of the white man, and the fact that he applied to Europe colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, the coolies of India, and the blacks of Africa."

"What am I driving at? At this idea: that no one colonizes innocently, that no one colonizes with impunity either; that a nation which colonizes, that a civilization which justifies colonization—and therefore force—is already a sick civilization, a civilization that is morally diseased, that irresistibly, progressing from one consequence to another, one repudiation to another, calls for its Hitler, I mean its punishment."

"Colonization, I repeat, dehumanizes even the most civilized man; that colonial activity, colonial enterprise, colonial conquest, which is based on contempt for the native and justified by that contempt, inevitably tends to change him who undertakes it; that the colonizer, who in order to ease his conscience gets into the habit of seeing the other man as an animal, accustoms himself to treating him like an animal, and tends objectively to transform himself into an animal. It is this result, this boomerang effect of colonization, that I wanted to point out."

"It is not the head of a civilization that begins to rot first. It is the heart."

"Khrushchev’s revelations concerning Stalin are enough to have plunged all those who have participated in communist activity, to whatever degree, into an abyss of shock, pain, and shame (or, at least, I hope so).The dead, the tortured, the executed—no, neither posthumous rehabilitations, nor national funerals, nor official speeches can overcome them. These are not the kind of ghosts that one can ward off with a mechanical phrase.From now on, they will show up as watermarks in the very substance of the system."

"The details supplied by Khrushchev on Stalin’s methods ... lead us to believe in the existence in these countries of a veritable state capitalism, exploiting the working class in a manner not very different from the way the working class is used in capitalist countries."

"With the exception of Yugoslavia, in numerous European countries—in the name of socialism—usurping bureaucracies that are cut off from the people (bureaucracies from which it is now proven that nothing can be expected) have achieved the pitiable wonder of transforming into a nightmare what humanity has for so long cherished as a dream: socialism."

"I believe I have said enough to make it clear that it is neither Marxism nor communism that I am renouncing, and that it is the usage some have made of Marxism and communism that I condemn. That what I want is that Marxism and communism be placed in the service of black peoples, and not black peoples in the service of Marxism and communism."

"Weakness always has a thousand means and cowardice is all that keeps us from listing them."

"Every time you summon me it reminds me of a basic fact, the fact that you've stolen everything from me, even my identity!"

"It is under these circumstances that, apropos of buying a ribbon for my daughter, I happened to leaf through a periodical on display in the haberdashery where the ribbon was sold. It was, under an extremely unpretentious cover, the first issue of a review called Tropiques which had just come out in Fort-de-France. Needless to say, knowing the extent to which ideas had been debased in the last year and not unfamiliar with the lack of scruples characteristic of police reactions in Martinique, I approached this periodical with extreme diffidence. ... I could not believe my eyes: for what was said there was what had to be said and was said in a manner not only as elegantly but elevatedly as anyone could say it! All the grimacing shadows were apart, scattered; all the lies, all the mockery shredded: thus the voice of man was in no way broken, suppressed—it sprang upright again like the very spike of light. Aimé Césaire, such was the name of the one who spoke."

"At most, critics are permitted to say something about the conflicting aspects of the formation of the personality in question and to bring out the striking circumstances of that formation. Unquestionably in Césaire's case it would for once lead us, at full gallop, away from the path of indifference."

"Not surprisingly, a valorization of the body has been present in nearly all the literature of "second wave" 20th-century feminism, as it has characterized the literature produced by the anti-colonial revolt and by the descendants of the enslaved Africans. On this ground, across great geographic and cultural boundaries, Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own (1929) anticipates Aimé Cesaire's Return to the Native Land (1938), when she mockingly scolds her female audience and, behind it, a broader female world, for not having managed to produce anything but children."

"As Cedric Robinson argued, a group of radical black intellectuals including W. E. B. Du Bois, Aimé Césaire, C. L. R. James, George Padmore, Ralph Bunche, Oliver Cox, and others, understood fascism not as some aberration from the march of progress, an unexpected right-wing turn, but a logical development of Western civilization itself."

"Over many years (I am almost 72) so many poets have touched my imagination and opened paths for me—it hardly makes sense to list them. I have always read a great deal of poetry. Some poets—like Robert Lowell, Denise Levertov, Randall Jarrell, Jean Valentine, Audre Lorde, Hayden Carruth, Jane Cooper, June Jordan, Joy Harjo, Clayton Eshelman—have been my friends, we’ve been comrades in exchanging work and encouraging each other… But I’ve also been powerfully affected by Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, Muriel Rukeyser, Aimé Césaire, Robert Duncan—poets I met briefly if at all."

"In an essay on the Caribbean poet Aimé Césaire, Clayton Eshleman names this hunger as "the desire, the need, for a more profound and ensouled world." There is a continuing dynamic between art repressed and art reborn, between the relentless marketing of the superficial and the "spectral and vivid reality that employs all means" (Rukeyser again) to reach through armoring, resistances, resignation, to recall us to desire."

"For the main leaders in the colonized world in the 1950s and ’60s, the issue was not promises of future integration but decolonization and anticolonial solidarity. The issue of race was essential. Colonialism was in its essence a racist project, and the lack of US support for full decolonization reminded many Third World leaders of racial oppression against African-Americans in the United States. But the European Left was also to blame. In his 1956 resignation from the PCF, whom he had been elected to represent in the National Assembly ten years earlier, the black Martinican writer Aimé Césaire castigated the Eurafrique idea: “Look at the great breath of unity passing over all the black countries! Look how, here and there, the torn fabric is being re-stitched! Experience, harshly acquired experience, has taught us that we have at our disposal but one weapon, one sole efficient and undamaged weapon: the weapon of unity, the weapon of the anticolonial rallying of all who are willing, and the time during which we are dispersed according to the fissures of the metropolitan parties is also the time of our weakness and defeat.”"

"They will return, these Gods you have never stopped longing for. Time will bring back the order of ancient days."

"The Cantal of Auvergne corresponds to the Cantal of the Himalayas. The Merovingians are Indians or Persians or Trojans . . . . Is it not highly important to clarify these relationships, migrations and filiations, at least with somewhat more care and research than has been devoted to them so far?"

"Les idées sont des fonds qui ne portent intérèt qu'entre les mains du talent."

"La religion unit les hommes dans les mêmes dogmes, la politique les unit dans les mêmes principes, et la philosophie les renvoie dans les bois; c'est le dissolvant de la société."

"La politique est comme le sphinx de la fable, elle dévore tous ceux qui n'expliquent pas ses énigmes."

"Le chat ne nous caresse pas, il se caresse à nous."

"La raison est historienne, mais les passions sont actrices."

"Le prince absolu peut être un Néron, mais il est quelquefois Titus ou Marc-Aurèle; le peuple est souvent Néron, et jamais Marc-Aurèl."

"C'est la prose qui donne l'empire à une Langue, parce qu'elle est tout usuelle; la poésie n'est qu'un objet de luxe."

"L'homme qui parle est … l'homme qui pense tout haut."

"Tout le monde a besoin de la France, quand l'Angleterre a besoin de tout le monde."

"Ce qui n'est pas clair n'est pas français."

"Le langage est la peinture de nos idées."

"L'être qui ne fait de sentir, ne pense pas encore; et l'être qui pense, sent toujours."

"La certitude et le mystère sont pour le sentiment; la clarté et l'incertitude pour le raisonnement."

"Dieu est la plus haute mesure de notre incapacité; l'universe, l'espace lui-même, ne sont pas si inaccessibles."

"L'imagination est amie de l'avenir."

"C'est un terrible luxe que l'incredulité."

"In the first ardor of their discoveries, the orientalists proclaimed that, in its entirety, an antiquity more profound, more philosophical, and more poetical than that of Greece and Rome was emerging from the depths of Asia. [One that promised] a new Reformation of the religious and secular world. This is the great subject in philosophy today."

"When human revolutions first began, India stood more expressly than any other country for what may be called a Declaration of the Rights of the Being. That divine Individuality, and its community with infmity, is obviously the foundation and the source of all life and all history."

"India made, more loudly than anyone, what we might call the “declaration of the rights of the Being.” There, in this divine self, in this society of the infinite with itself, lies clearly the foundation, the root of all life and all history."

"Save me, Lord! thou King Eternal! From those dark domains infernal, Where is weeping, where is wailing; Where all prayers are unavailing; Where each soul doth self-inherit Proof of its own damned demerit;— Tortures reaping, ever crying, From the worm that is undying; Where no hope can come to sever Life from death, in hell for ever!Me to Zion take in pity! David's Zion, tranquil city! Built by God, of light; its portal Cross of Christ, the wood immortal: Key that locks, the tongue of Peter; Tuned, the songs of gods not sweeter: Walled, heaven-high, the scaleless story, Guarded by the King of Glory?In this city, light eternal Reigns for ever—peace superna; Odors flow in such completeness, Heaven is filled with songs of sweetness;There the soul knows no corruption, Frailty none, nor interruption; None too little, none dilated— All in Christ are consummated.Heavenly city! glorious city! Built upon the rock of pity! City, in whose gates are gathered All I long for, all I fathered! Now I greet thee, thee I sigh for, Whose possession I would die for!With what warm congratulations Meet in thee the joyful nations! How delighted stand they gazing At the walls, with glory blazing— Hyacinth and chalcedony— Heaven's own wealth their patrimony!In this city's streets, for greeting, Clouds of blessed souls are meeting— Singing songs, such as the pious Moses sang for rapt Elias!"

"Cura, labor, studium, sumpti pro munere honores, Ite, aliam posthac sollicitate animam. Me deus a uobis procul euocat. Ilicet actis Rebus terrenis, hospita terra uale. Corpus, auara, tamen sollemnibus excipe saxis. Nanque animam celo reddimus, ossa tibi."

"It could very easily not be bearable; even with love, one gets the sense it barely is."

"The first task of the new man is to restore the values of the body. He starts out from the demands and attributes of the body. This is the great revolution of the twentieth century which a section of French intellectuals have dimly sensed but which they have not been able to grasp clearly and communicate to the nation: the revolution of the body, restoration of the body […] The new man starts with the body, he knows that the body is the articulation of the soul, and that the soul can only express itself, reveal itself, acquire substance in the body. There is nothing more spiritual than this recognition of the body. It is the soul that calls, that demands salvation, that saves itself by rediscovering the body.Nothing is less materialist than this movement. The pathetic mistake of the last generation of rationalists, one which summed up all the dissolution, all the bastardization of their pseudo-humanism, was to accuse of materialism a revolution which salvages and restores the sources and mainstays of the spirit."

"Finally, he allowed himself to look around, to desire. This whole world, which he had disdained for so many months, appeared new. He could have hated men, but he only saw the women, whom he adored. It was a balmy evening. If he had looked at the horizon, as he did at the front, but immediately forgot to do in that grand city that demands the attention of all a man's senses, he would have seen a charming sky. A starless Paris sky. It was a mild evening, slightly veined with cold. The women were opening their furs. They were glancing at him. Workers and girls. The girls tempted him more than the workers, and he wanted to play with his desire to the point of grinding his teeth or fainting. Everyone seemed to be moving towards a goal. And he, too, had a goal, the form of which was still unknown to him. Sooner or later, that shape would reveal itself."

"Myriam had performed a miracle for him, the miracle of money. The appearance of money in some lives can be a miracle like that of love: it stirs the imagination and the senses powerfully, at least in the first moment."

"Most of what is reported by historians of the lives of men is but a residue; they speak of political action, but political action is but a residue. There is, for example, the sky, colours, smells, women, children, old men. God is present everywhere bearing a thousand names: politics and history takes no account of this."

"“You see, my little one, bringing a child into the world is the ultimate selfish act. When you make a child, you're thinking only of yourself, and sometimes of the woman you're making one with. That's the truth of the matter. Then your selfishness continues. You inevitably impose an education and a direction on this child. We're neither of those fools, those pale turnips of rationalism, those Pilates who wash their hands and say: “I don't want to impose anything on my son; later, he'll choose.” You can't make a vacuum around your child; at most, you can make slack. Whether we like it or not.""

"Stripped of my clothes, naked, I climbed into a tree. My bare thighs in a close embrace pressed the smooth damp bark. My sandals trod upon the branches.Almost at the top, but still under the leaves in the shadow from the heat, I put myself astride of a projecting branch, my legs dangling in the air.The rain came, and cool drops fell upon me and ran over my skin. My hands were soiled with moss, and my toes were red with the juice of crushed flowers.I felt the life of the beautiful tree when the wind blew through its branches. Then I pressed my thighs together in an ecstasy, and laid my open lips against the hairy nape of a limb."

"When he returned, I hid my face with my two hands. He said to me: "Fear nothing. Who has seen our kissing?" — "Who has seen us? The night and the moon."And the stars and the first dawn. The moon looked at her face in the lake and has told it to the water under the willows. The water of the lake has told it to the oar.And the oar has told it to the boat, and the boat to the fisher. Helas! Helas! if that were all! But the fisher has told it to a woman.The fisher has told it to a woman. My father and my mother, and my sisters, and all Hellas will know it."

"He presses me so closely that he will crush me, poor little girl that I am. But when he is within me, I know nothing more in the world, and they might cut off my limbs without recalling me from my ecstasy."

"I will leave the bed as she has left it, unmade and rumpled, the covers wrinkled, in order that the imprint of her form may remain by the side of mine.Until to-morrow I will not go to the bath, I will not wear my clothing, and I will not comb my hair, for fear lest I efface one of her caresses.I will eat neither this morning nor this evening, and upon my lips I will put neither rouge nor powder, in order that her kisses may remain.I will leave the shades closed, and I will not open the door, for fear lest the memory she has left behind should fly away on the wind."

"Mother inexhaustible, incorruptible, creatrix, first-born, self-conceived, self-created, enjoyed of thyself alone and issue of thyself, Astarte!Oh, perpetually fecund, oh, virgin and nurse of all, chaste and lascivious one, pure and wanton, ineffable, nocturnal, soft, breather of fire, foam of the sea!Thou who accordest thy grace in secret, thou who unitest, thou who lovest, thou who fillest the unending races of savage beasts with furious desire, and joinest the sexes in the forests!Oh, Astarte irresistible, hear me ; take me, possess me, oh. Moon, and thirteen times each year draw from my privities the libation of my blood."

"She lay upon her bosom, with her elbows in front of her, her legs wide apart and her cheek resting on her hand, pricking, with a long golden pin, small symmetrical holes in a pillow of green linen.Languid with too much sleep, she had remained alone upon the disordered bed ever since she had awakened, two hours after mid-day.The great waves of her hair, her only garment, covered one of her sides.This hair was resplendently opaque, soft as fur, longer than a bird’s wing, supple, uncountable, full of life and warmth. It covered half her back, flowed under her naked belly, glittered under her knees in thick, curling clusters. The young woman was enwrapped in this precious fleece. It glinted with a russet sheen, almost metallic, and had procured her the name of Chrysis, given her by the courtesans of Alexandria.It was not the sleek hair of the court-woman from Syria, or the dyed hair of the Asiatics, or the black and brown hair of the daughters of Egypt. It was the hair of an Aryan race, the Galilæans across the sands."

"“At Ephesos, in our country, when two virgins of nubile age like Rhodis and me love one another, the law allows them to be united in marriage. They both go to the temple of Athena and sacrifice their double girdle; thence to the sanctuary of Iphinoë, where they offer a lock of their hair, interwined; and finally to the peristyle of Dionysios, where the more male of the two receives a little knife of sharp-edged gold, and a white linen cloth to stanch the blood. In the evening, the “fiancee” is conducted to her new home in a flowered chariot between her husband and the paranymph, escorted by torch-bearers and flute-girls. And thenceforth they have the rights of married people; they may adopt little girls and associate them in their intimate life. They are respected. They have a family. That is the dream of Rhodis. But it is not the custom here.”"

"If, in the course of their stray amours, they conceived a son, he was brought up in the temple-enclosure in the contemplation of the perfect form and in the service of its divinity. If they were brought to bed of a daughter, the child was consecrated to the goddess.On the first day of its life, they celebrated its symbolic marriage with the son of Dionysos, and the Hierophant deflowered it herself with a little golden knife; for virginity is displeasing to Aphrodite. Later on, the little girl entered the Didascalion, a great monumental school situated behind the temple, and where the theory and practice of all the erotic arts were taught in seven stages: the use of the eyes, the embrace, the motions of the body, the secrets of the bite, of the kiss, and of glottism."

"“From the point of view of love, woman is a perfect instrument. From head to foot she is constructed, solely, marvellously, for love. She alone knows how to love. She alone knows how to be loved. Consequently, if a couple of lovers is composed of two women, it is perfect; if there is only one woman, it is only half as good; if there is no woman at all, it is purely idiotic. That is all I have to say.”"

"Human love is to be distinguished from the rut of animals only by two divine functions: the caress and the kiss."

"King Pausole dispensed justice from under a cherry tree, for, he was wont to say, that tree gives just as much shade as any other, and has the advantage over the traditional oak that in the summer it bears delightful fruit."

"Pausole could not walk, seat himself nor even raise his head without touching a naked sleeper. A suspended net united two and pressed one against the other. Those who were troubled by the heat slept in the shallow pool, and with their heads on the marble border, stretched their legs under the water as far as the central mermaid’s figure: pistil of an open tulip formed by their radiant bodies."

"An enormous fig tree let fall its flat leaves and its lilac coloured fruit like a carpet over the balustrade. On the left the park was massed with its magnolias which had already lost their flowers, its shuddering eucalyptus, its squat Japanese palms, its magnificent lunar sago trees. A hedge of aloes hemmed in the dark garden and the plain stretched beyond, to the Stars."

"From the mouth of a satyr with extravagant ears, the water fell into a natural basin of red earth and green vegetation where oleanders had taken root in compact masses. It was by no means the musty and slimy basin of our gardens where the useless spring soaks an earth already soft with rain. It was a birth of flowers in the purple soil of the Midi, a fountain of strength, a creative urn whence life streamed in verdant motion, and the old satyr, son of Pan, watched the youth of the woods fall eternally from his lips.Above the grotesque horned head which the fair Aline took to be the devil, two marble nymphs embraced, leaning towards the dark basin. At the end of each winter, the almond tree covered them with its little eglantines. In the summer they took on all the flesh tints under the sun. At night they became goddesses."

"“Let me resume,” said M. Lebirbe. “In fighting the domestic licence, in bringing discredit on secret meeting places and on vile old men who disparage nudity only to find it less tame between the corset and the black stocking, we are making great efforts towards the antique and pure nude, we favour life in daylight, freedom of morals, example and direct teaching of restraint — in a word, the expansion of public voluptuousness in the country of Tryphemia.” [...]Then accentuating his first words by Striking the air with his fist, Pausole said slowly:“Sir, man demands to be left alone. Each is master of himself, of his opinions, of his behaviour and of his actions, within the limits of inoffensiveness. The citizens of Europe are tired of feeling at every moment the hand of authority on their shoulder, an authority which is made unbearable by being omnipresent. They still tolerate the fact that the law speaks to them in the name of public interest, but when it begins to interfere with the individual in spite of or against his wishes, when it directs his private life, his marriage, divorce, last wishes, reading, performances, games and costume, the individual has the right to ask the law why it has poked its nose into his affairs without having been invited. ”“Sire...”“Never will I place my subjects in the position of being able to level such a reproach against me. I give them advice, it is my duty. Some do not follow it, it is their right. And so long as one of them does not put out his hand to steal a purse, or to give a rap on the nose, I do not have to interfere in the life of a free citizen. Your work is good, Monsieur Lebirbe; let it spread and be imposed, but don’t expect me to lend you police to throw into irons those who do not think as we.”"

"“... after you have done everything to please a man and he's taken his pleasure with you, all you are for him is a whore, and a whore's daughter.”"

"Nous avons jugé inutile d'expliquer les mots: con, fente, moniche, motte, pine, queue, bitte, couille, foutre (verbe), foutre (subst.), bander, branler, sucer, lécher, pomper, baiser, piner, enfiler, enconner, enculer, décharger, godmiché, gougnotte, gousse, soixante-neuf, minette, mimi, putain, bordel. Ces mots-là sont familiers à toutes les petites filles."

"We have considered it useless to explain the words: cunt, slit, fanny, mound, cock, tail, bollock, testicle, cum (verb), cum (noun), erection, masturbate, suck, lick, pump, kiss, fellate, screw, fuck, ass-fuck, ejaculate, dildo, lesbian, dyke, sixty-nine, cunnilingus, cute, whore, brothel. These words are familiar to all little girls."

"Rien ne manque à sa gloire, il manquait à la nôtre."

"La loi permet souvent ce que défend l’honneur."

"Qu’une nuit paraît longue à la douleur qui veille!"

"La loi de l'univers, c'est malheur aux vaincus!"

"N’en desplaise aux docteurs, Cordeliers, Jacobins, Pardieu! les plus grands clercs ne sont pas les plus fins."

"Aidez-vous seulement et Dieu vous aidera."

"Chacun est artisan de sa bonne fortune."

"J’ay vescu sans nul pensement, Me laissant aller doucement A la douce loy naturelle; Et ne scaurois dire pourquoy La Mort daigna penser à moy Qui n’ay daigné penser en elle."

"Les fous sont aux échecs les plus proches des rois."

"La maulvaise Fortune Ne vient jamais, qu'elle n'en apporte une Ou deux ou trois avecques elle."

"J’avois un jour un vallet de Gascongne, Gourmand, yvrogne et asseuré menteur, Pipeur, larron, jureur, blasphémateur, Sentant la hart de cent pas à la ronde; Au demourant, le meilleur filz du monde."

"Rome de Rome est le seul monument Et Rome Rome a vaincu seulement."

"Vois quel orgueil, quelle ruine: et comme Celle qui mit le monde sous ses lois, Pour dompter tout, se dompta quelquefois, Et devint proie au temps, qui tout consomme.Rome de Rome est le seul monument, Et Rome Rome a vaincu seulement. Le Tibre seul, qui vers la mer s'enfuit, Reste de Rome. O mondaine inconstance! Ce qui est ferme, est par le temps détruit, Et ce qui fuit, au temps fait résistance."

"Sacrés coteaux, et vous saintes ruines, Qui le seul nom de Rome retenez, Vieux monuments, qui encor soutenez L'honneur poudreux de tant d'âmes divines. * * * Et bien qu'au temps pour un temps fassent guerre Les bâtiments, si est-ce que le temps Oeuvres et noms finablement atterre. Tristes désirs, vivez doncques contents: Car si le temps finit chose si dure, Il finira la peine que j'endure."

"France, mère des arts, des armes et des lois ..."

"Heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a fait un beau voyage, Ou comme cestui là qui conquit la toison, Et puis est retourné, plein d’usage et raison, Vivre entre ses parents le reste de son âge!Quand reverrai-je, hélas, de mon petit village Fumer la cheminée, et en quelle saison Reverrai-je le clos de ma pauvre maison, Qui m'est une province, et beaucoup davantage?"

"Languages do not spring up like plants, some weak and sickly, others healthy and robust. All their virtue lies in the will and determination of mortals. To condemn a language as being struck with impotence is to adopt a tone of arrogance and temerity; as certain of our fellow-countrymen do to-day, who, being nothing less than Greeks or Latins, regard with a more than stoical superciliousness everything written in French. If our language is poorer than the Greek or Latin, this is not attributable to our own inability, but to the ignorance of our own predecessors who have bequeathed it to us in so meagre and so bare a form that it stands in need of ornament, and, so to speak, of plumage from other sources."

"When you pass from the text to the translation, you seem to travel from the burning mountain of Etna to the icy summit of Caucasus."

"The Romans well knew how to enrich their language without applying themselves to the labour of translation. They imitated the best Greek authors, transforming themselves into them, devouring them, and after having well digested them, converting them into blood and tissue. In like manner we must imitate the Greeks and Latins."

"Thou, then, who devotest thyself to the service of the Muses, turn thee to the Greek, Latin, and even Spanish and Italian authors, from whence thou mayest derive a more exquisite form of poetry than from our French authors. In no way trust to the examples of such of our own as have acquired a great renown, with little or no science; and do not allege that poets are born, for this would be too easy a method of achieving immortality. Therefore read and re-read day and night Greek and Latin models, and leave to me all those old French poems for the Floral Games of Toulouse and the Puy de Rouen, such as rondeaux, ballads, virelays, chants royal, chansons, and other suchlike sweetmeats, which corrupt the taste of our language, and only serve to testify to our ignorance."

"Les oisillons de mon païs Ai oïs en Bretaigne: A lor chant m'est il bien avis Qu'en la douce compaigne Les oï jadis, Se gi' i ai mespris. Il m'ont en si doux penser mis Qu'a chançon faire me suis pris, Tant que je parataigne Ce qu'amors m'ont lonc tens promis..."

"Cant voi l’aube du jour venir, Nulle rien ne doi tant haïr, K’elle fait de moi departir Mon amin, cui j’ain per amors. Or ne hais riens tant com le jour, Amins, ke me depairt de vos."

"Des états la sombre origine, Les progrès, l’éclat, la ruine Repassent encore sous nos yeux; Et, présens à tout, nous y sommes Contemporains de tous les horames, Et citoyens de tous les lieux."

"L'instant de notre naissance Fut pour nous un arrêt de mort."

"The moment of our birth Did on us the death sentence pass."

"Le Besoin, père de l'Adresse."

"(Partout l'œeil surpris admire) Un désordre plein de beauté."

"Tout est dit, tout devient commun. Les Conquérans voudroient un nouveau monde; C'est aux Rimeurs qu'il en faut un."

"La Providence est la commune mère. Fiez-vous-y: mais ne la tentez pas."

"Eh! sot! que n'attends-tu, pour les accommoder, Que les gens sont las de se battre?"

"Dès qu'on est homme il faut faillir."

"(Donnez le même esprit aux hommes; Vous ôtez tout le sel de la société.) L’Ennui nâcquit un jour de l’Uniformité."

"La Haine veille et I'Amitié s'endort."

"Le cœur des malheureux n'est qu'un trop sûr oracle."

"II faut un terms au crime, et non à la vengeance."

"Ainsi que le heros brille par ses exploits, La grandeur des bienfaits doit signaler les rois."

"Le crime est toujours crime, et jamais la beauté N'a pu servir de voile à sa difformité."

"Je connais la fureur de tes soupçons jaloux, Mais j'ai trop de vertu pour craindre mon époux."

"A la cour d’un tyran, injuste ou légitime, Le plus léger soupçon tint toujours lieu de crime; Et cest être proscrit que d’être soupçonné."

"On n'est point criminel pour être ambitieux."

"La crainte fit les dieux, l'audace a fait les rois."

"La parole des rois n'est plus qu'une ombre vaine."

"L'innocence a toujours confondu l'imposture."

"Aucun fiel n’a jamais empoisonné ma plume."

"Je sçay asses, que tu y pourras lire Mainte erreur, mesme en si durs Epygrammes."

"Au Caucasus de mon souffrir lyé, Dedans l’Enfer de ma peine eternelle, Ce grand desir de mon bien oblyé, Comme l’Aultour de ma mort immortelle, Ronge l’esprit par une fureur telle, Que consommé d’un si ardent poursuyvre, Espoir le fait, non pour mon bien, revivre: Mais pour au mal renaistre incessament, Affin qu’en moy ce mien malheureux vivre Prometheuse tourmente innocemment."

"Je sens le noud de plus en plus estraindre Mon ame au bien de sa béatitude. Tant qu'il n'est mal qui la puisse constraindre A délaisser si doulce servitude. ... Quelle sera la délectation, Si ainsi doulce est l'umbre de l'attente?"

"Toute doulceur d'Amour est destrempée De fiel amer, et de mortel venin."

"La douce voiz du louseignol sauvage Qu’oi nuit et jor cointoier et tentir Me radoucist mon cuer et rassouage. Lors ai talent que chant pour esbaudir."

"Chançon, va t'en pour faire mon message La u je n'os trestourner ne guenchir."

"Dame, ensi est qu'il m'en convient aler, Et departir de la doce contrée, Ou tant ai mauz soffers et endurez; Quant je vos lais, droiz est, que je m'en hée: Dex! porquoi fu la terre d'outremer, Qui tant amans aura fait desevrer, Dont puis ne fu l'amour reconforté, Ne ne porent lor joie remembrer?"

"Folz est qui a escient Veut sor gravele semer; Et cil plus qui entrepent Volage femme a amer.On n'i peut raison trouver; Tost ame, et tost se repent, Et tost fet celui dolent Qui plus s' i cuide fier."

"Mult seraie bone vie De bien amer, Qui aurait bele amie Pour deporter; Sanz orgueil, sanz folie, Et sanz guiler, Ne ja n'eust envie d'autrui amer; Ne me vousist fausser; Mes, com loial amie, Celui amer Qui de fin cuer la prie."

"Ha belle blonde Au cors si gent Perle du monde Que j'aime tant!"

"Quant revient la saison que l'herbe reverdoie Que di fleons clerets la terre alme s'ondoie, Qu'esjoissent oysels de lors gracieux chantz Li bois, et la pré, e li chamz, Soir et matin, filles, n'allez sollettes Quierre ez gazons derraines violettes; Serpent y gist que n'y mord au talon, Por ce n'est il, tendres poulettes, Por ce n'est il que plus felon."

"Gran talen ai qu'un baisar Li pogues tolre o emblar; É si pueis s'en iraissia, Volentiers lo li rendria."

"A trompeur, trompeur et demy."

"C'est une dangereuse épargne D'amasser tresor de regrets."

"Tout à part moi en mon penser m'encios, Et fais chasteaulx en Espaigne et en France."

"Chose qui plaist est à demy vendue."

"Elle a beaux yeulx et ne voit goutte."

"L'habit le moine ne fait pas."

"Oncques feu ne fut sans fumée."

"Réveiller le chat qui dort."

"Jeu qui trop dure ne vault rien, Tant va le pot à l'eau qui brise."

"N’est elle de tous biens garnie, Celle que j'ayme loyaument?"

"Soit qu'elle danse, cante ou rie, Ou face quelque esbatement, Faictes en loyal jugement, Sans faveur et sans flatterie."

"My ghostly fader, I me confesse, First to God and then to you, That at a window,—wot ye how?— I stale a cosse of grete sweteness."

"The smylyng mouth and laughyng eyen gray, The brestis rounde and long smal armys twayne."

"A quoy me sert la vie en butte à la fortune? II vaut mieux, il vaut mieux en arrester le cours, Et mourir une fois que mourir tons les jours."

"Je sens l'impatience en mon âme accroistre De cognoistre le mal que j'ay peur de cognoistre."

"Ne croy pas en automne Cueillir les fruits de l'amour."

"On ne peut trop tost ny trop tard Gouster les plaisirs de la vie."

"Plus on est élevé, plus on court de dangers; Les grands pins sont en butte aux coups de la tempeste Et la rage des vents brise plutôt la faiste Des maisons de nos roys, que les toits des bergers."

"Rien au monde ne dure Qu'un eternel changement."

"Et vous, eaux qui dormez sur des lits de pavots, Vous qui toujours suivez vous-mêmes fugitives..."

"Tircis, il faut penser à faire la retraite; La course de nos jours est plus qu’à demi faite; L’âge insensiblement nous conduit à la mort; ... Il est temps de jouir des délices du port."

"Les lois de la mort sont fatales Aussi bien aux maisons royales Qu'aux taudis converts de roseaux; Tous nos jours sont sujets aux Parques; Ceux des bergers et des monarques Sont coupds des memes ciseaux."

"A chantar m'er de so qu'ieu no volria, Tant me rancur de sel cui sui amia; Quar ieu l'am mais que nulha res que sia; Vas lui no m val merces ni cortezia Ni ma beutatz, ni mos pretz, ni mos sens; Qu'en aissi m sui enganada e trahia, Cum s'ieu agues vas lui fag falhimens."

"De totz caitius sui ieu aisselh que plus Ai gran dolor, e suefre greu turmen, Per qu' ieu volgra murir, e fora m gen Qui m' aucizes, pois tan sui esperdutz; Que viures m'es marrimens et esglais, Pus morta es ma dona N'Azalais."

"Belh m'es quan lo vens m'alena En Abril ans qu'intre Mays, E tota la nuegz serena Chanta'l rossinhols e'l jays; Quecx auzel en son lenguatge, Per la frescor del mati, Van menan joy d'agradatge, Com quecx ab sa par s'aizi."

"A la fontana del vergier, On l' erb er vertz, josta 'l gravier, A l' ombra d' un fust domesgier, En aiziment de blancas flors E de novelh chan costumier, Trobey sola, ses companhier, Selha que no vol mon solatz."

"De chantar farai Una esdemessa, Que temps ven e vai, E reman promessa, E de gran esmai Fai deus tost esdessa. Segur estem, seignors, E ferms de ric socors."

"La lauzeta e'l rossinhol Am mais que nulh' autr' auzel, Que pel joy del temps novel Comenson premier lur chan: Et ieu, ad aquel semblan, Quan li autre trobador Estan mut, ieu chant d'amor De ma dona Na Vierna."

"Ab l'alen tir vas me l'aire Qu'ieu sen venir de Proensa; Tot quant es de lai m'agensa, Si que, quan n'aug ben retraire, Ieu m'o escout en rizen E'n deman per un mot cen, Tan m'es bel quan n'aug ben dire."

"Domna, puois de mi no us cal, E partit m'avetz de vos, &c."

"Be m play lo douz temps de pascor Que fai fuelhas e flors venir; E play mi quant aug la baudor Dels auzels que fan retentir Lor chan per lo boscatge; E plai me quan vey sus els pratz Tendas e pavallos fermatz; E plai m' en mon coratge, Quan vey per campanhas rengatz Cavalliers ab cavals armatz."

"Ar em al freg temps vengut quel gels el neus e la fainga el aucellet estan mut, c'us de chanter non s'afrainga; e son sec li ram pels plais — que flors ni foilla noi nais ni rossignols non i crida, que l'am e mai me reissida."

"Voilà le soleil d'Austerlitz."

"Tous les méchants sont buveurs d'eau: C'est bien prouvé par le déluge."

"Un bon mourir vaut mieux qu'un mal vivre."

"Il faut envisager le passé sans regrets, le présent sans faiblesse, et l'avenir sans illusions."

"Le cœur a ses secrets pour guérir les blessures qu'il reçoit."

"Il y a des femmes qui traversent la vie, comme ces souffles des printemps qui vivifient tout sur leur passage."

"L'art de régner consiste surtout dans l'habileté des choix."

"L'amitié est le premier besoin du coeur, personne ne peut s'en passer."

"La sottise est une maladie contagieuse, surut chez les sots."

"C'est un mérite rare que celui de reconnaître son erreur."

"La pire des tyrannies est celle qui opprime la pensée."

"Un allié trop puissant devient souvent plus redoutable qu'un ennemi."

"Il y a bien peu de gens pour qui la vérité ne soit pas une sorte d'injure."

"Le temps ordinairement explique tout."

"Une femme adultère est une mère sans entrailles."

"Les grands parleurs sont comme les vases vides, qui sonnent plus que ceux qui sont pleins."

"La vie d'un homme de bien est un combat continuel contre les mauvais penchants."

"La bienfaisance ne vieillit jamais; elle s'améliore avec l'âge, et devient une habitude."

"Que sont mes amis devenus Que j'avais de si près tenus Et tant aimés?"

"L'amour est morte: Ce sont amis que vent emporte, Et il ventait devant ma porte."

"Sans un peu de folie On ne rime plus à trente ans."

"Trouver la mélancolie Dans le sein de la volupté."

"L'esprit n'est jamais las d'écrire, Lorsque le cœur est de moitié."

"La douleur est un siècle, et la mort un moment."

"Les maîtres cependant sont des gens bien heureux, Que souvent nous ayons le sens commun pour eux."

"Dans mainte auteur de science profonde J'ai lu que l'on perd à trop courir le monde; Très rarement en devient-on meilleur: Un sort errant ne conduit qu'à l'erreur."

"Ah! qu'un grand nom est un bien dangereux: Un sort caché fut toujours plus heureux."

"Désir de fille est un feu qui dévore; Désir de nonne est cent fois pis encore."

"Les sots sont ici-bas pour nos menus plaisirs."

"Ce n'est pas sur leurs moeurs que je veux qu'on en cause, Un vice, un déshonneur, font assez peu de chose; Tout cela dans le monde est oublié bientôt; Un ridicule reste, et c'est ce qu'il leur faut."

"Tout ce qui vit n'est fait que pour nous réjouir, Et se moquer du monde est tout l'art d'en jouir."

"La faute en est aux dieux qui la firent si bête."

"Mais Paris guérit tout et les absents ont tort."

"Un bien qu'on doit avoir est comme un bien qu'on a."

"C'est des premiers pas que dépend la carrière."

"Elle a d'assez beaux yeux Pour des yeux de province."

"L'aigle d'une maison n'est qu'un sot dans une autre."

"Tout est mal, tout est bien, tout le monde est content."

"L'esprit qu’on veut avoir gâte celui qu’on a."

"Un rapport clandestin n'est pas d'un honnête homme; Quand j'accuse quelqu'un, je le dois, et me nomme."

"Who is more fortunate, he who is clever enough to deceive his mistress, or he who is deceived by her without knowing it?"

"(Que) la loi du devoir est une loi d’amour."

"Oh! comme les oiseaux doivent mourir l’hiver! Pourtant, lorsque viendra le temps des violettes, Nous ne trouverons pas leurs délicats squelettes Dans le gazon d’avril, où nous irons courir. Est-ce que les oiseaux se cachent pour mourir?"

"(Car) le poète a pour monnaie Des étoiles dans son gousset."

"(Et) l’unique bonheur auquel on peut prétendre En ce monde, est de croire et non pas de comprendre."

"Du luxe, des haillons, de la clarté, des cris Et de la fange. C’est le trottoir de Paris !"

"Le temps qui s’écoule fait bien ; Et mourir ne doit être rien, Puisque vivre est si peu de chose."

"Le vicomte, percé d’une longueur de lame, Tomba, fit un sursaut ou deux, et rendit l’âme. Alors, en rajustant au vainqueur son pourpoint, L’un des soldats lui dit: ::Vous le haïssiez? :::— Point. — Peut-on vous demander la cause de l’affaire? — La couleur des cheveux qu’il convient qu’on préfère. Il était pour les noirs, moi je suis pour les blonds. — Vous avez été vif, mon gentilhomme… Allons! Pour cheveux blonds ou noirs faut-il qu’on se courrouce? — C’est vrai, dit le bretteur, car ma maîtresse est rousse."

"Parfois, dans un coin triste et noir pousse une fleur."

"Il faut donner, donner, donner !"

"(Mais) la conscience, mon pauvre ami, c’est comme les gants de Suède : ça se porte sale."

"Icare est chut ici, le jeune audacieux, Qui pour voler au ciel eut assez de courage: Ici tomba son corps dégarni de plumage, Laissant tous braves cœurs de sa chute envieux."

"Il mourut poursuivant une haute aventure; Le ciel fut son désir, la mer sa sépulture: Est-il plus beau dessein, ou plus riche tombeau?"

"L’âme des Dieux habite dans les plantes."

"Tant ai mon cor en joy assis, per que no puesc mudar no'n chan, que joys m'a noirit pauc e gran; e ses luy non seria res, qu'assatz vey que tot l'als qu'om fay abaiss' e sordey' e dechai, mas so qu'amors e joys soste."

"La victoire me suit, et tout suit la victoire."

"Et vaincre sans péril serait vaincre sans gloire."

"Jeune homme sans mèlancolie, Blond comme un soleil d’Italie, Garde bien ta belle folie."

"Nous n'irons plus aux bois, les lauriers sont coupés."

"Licences poètiques. Il n’y en a pas."

"Cette femme a fait comme Troie: De braves gens sans aucun fruit Furent dix ans à cette proie Un cheval n'y fut qu'une nuit."

"Qui va plus tost que la fumée, Si ce n'est la flamme allumée? Plus tost que la flamme? le vent: Plus tost que le vent? c'est la femme: Quoi plus? rien, elle va devant Le vent, la fumée et la flamme."

"Du choc des sentiments et des opinions La vérité jaillit et s'échappe en rayons."

"Le Peintre n'avoit point, sous un voile jaloux, De la belle Pandore enseveli les charmes: L'innocence étoit nue et l'étoit sans alarmes. Elle s'enveloppoit de sa seule pudeur."

"Non teneas aurum totum quod splendet ut aurum."

"Il y a en Angleterre soizante sectes religieuses différentes, et une seule sauce."

"Nous sommes nés pour la vérité, et nous ne pouvons souffrir son abord. les figures, les paraboles, les emblémes, sont toujours des ornements nécessaires pour qu'elle puisse s'annoncer. et soit quon craigne qu'elle ne découvre trop brûsquement le défaut qu'on voudroit cacher, ou qu'enfin elle n'instruise avec trop peu de ménagement, ou veut, en la recevant, qu'elle soit déguisée."

"Where a woman has loved most, there she will soonest avenge herself."

"Expliquera, morbleu! les femmes qui pourra!"

"Car, vois-tu, chaque jour je t'aime davantage, Aujourd'hui plus qu'hier et bien moins que demain."

"Prenez-vous, quittez-vous, cherchez-vous tour à tour, Il n’est rien de réel que le rêve et l’amour."

"On aime Plus âprement que l'on ne hait!"

"Astres qui regardez les mondes où nous sommes, Pure armée au repos dans la hauteur des cieux, Campement éternel, léger, silencieux, Que pensez-vous de voir s'anéantir les hommes?"

"Que vaut biautez, que vaut richece, Que vaut honeurs? que vaut hautece, Puis que morz tot a sa devise Fait sor nos pluie et secherece, Puis qu'ele a tot en sa destrece, Quanqu'en despist et quanqu'en prise?"

"[T]he desire of bearing sovereign rule and authority respecteth neither blood nor amity, nor caring for virtue, as being wholly without respect of laws, or majesty divine; for it is not possible that he which invadeth the country and taketh away the riches of another man without cause or reason should know or fear God."

"[W]here shall a man find a more wicked and bold woman than a great personage once having loosed the bands of honor and honesty? [...] But I will not stand to gaze and marvel at women, for that there are many which seek to blaze and set them forth, in which their writings they spare not to blame them all for the faults of some one or few women. But I say that either nature ought to have bereaved man of that opinion to accompany with women, or else to endow them with such spirits as that they may easily support the crosses they endure, without complaining so often and so strangely, seeing it is their own beastliness that overthrows them. For if it be so that a woman is so imperfect a creature as they make her to be, and that they know this beast to be so hard to be tamed as they affirm, why then are they so foolish to preserve them, and so dull and brutish as to trust their deceitful and wanton embracings?"

"Hamlet, in this sort counterfeiting the madman, many times did divers actions of great and deep consideration, and often made such and so fit answers that a wise man would soon have judged from what spirit so fine an invention might procced, for that standing by the fire and sharpening sticks like poniards and pricks, one in smiling manner asked him wherefore he made those little staves so sharp at the points? "I prepare," saith he, "piercing darts and sharp arrows to revenge my father's death.""

"[T]he nature of all young men, especially such as are brought up wantonly, is so transported with the desires of the flesh, and entereth so greedily into the pleasures thereof, that it is almost impossible to cover the foul affection, neither yet to dissemble or hide the same by art or industry, much less to shun it. What cunning or subtlety soever they use to cloak their pretense, seeing occasion offered, and that in secret, especially in the most enticing sin that reigneth in man, they cannot choose (being constrained by voluptuousness) but fall to natural effect and working."

"[T]he counselor entered secretly into the Queen's chamber and there hid himself behind the arras, not long before the Queen and Hamlet came thither, who, being crafty and politic, as soon as he was within the chamber, doubting some treason, and fearing if he should speak severely and wisely to his mother touching his secret practices he should be understood and by that means intercepted, used his ordinary manner of dissimulation, and began to crow like a cock, beating with his arms in such manner as cocks use to strike with their wings, upon the hangings of the chamber; whereby, feeling something stirring under them, he cried, "A rat, a rat," and presently drawing his sword thrust it into the hangings, which done, pulled the counselor half dead out by the heels, made an end of killing him, and, being slain, cut his body in pieces, which he caused to be boiled and then cast it into an open vault or privy, that so it might serve for food to the hogs."

"Is this the part of a queen and daughter to a king? To live like a brute beast and like a mare that yieldeth her body to the horse that hath beaten her companion away, to follow the pleasure of an abominable king that hath murdered a far more honester and better man than himself in massacring Horvendile, the honor and glory of the Danes, who are now esteemed of no force nor valor at all, since the shining splendor of knighthood was brought to an end by the most wickedest and cruellest villain living upon earth? [...] O Queen Geruthe, it is the part of a bitch to couple with many and desire acquaintance of divers mastiffs; it is licentiousness only that hath made you deface out of your mind the memory of the valor and virtues of the good king your husband and my father. [...] It is not the part of a woman, much less of a princess, in whom all modesty, courtesy, compassion, and love ought to abound, thus to leave her dear child to fortune in the bloody and murderous hands of a villain and traitor. Brute beasts do not so, for lions, tigers, ounces, and leopards fight for the safety and defense of their whelps; and birds that have beaks, claws, and wings resist such as would ravish them of their young ones."

"It toucheth not the matter herein to discover the parts of divination in man, and whether this Prince, by reason of his over-great melancholy, had received those impressions, divining that which never any but himself had before declared, like the philosophers who, discoursing of divers deep points of philosophy, attribute the force of those divinations to such as are Saturnists by complexion, who oftentimes speak of things which, their fury ceasing, they then already can hardly understand who are the pronouncers."

"I mean not to relate that which divers men believe, that a reasonable soul becometh the habitation of a meaner sort of devils, by whom men learn the secrets of things natural; and much less do I account of the supposed governors of the world feigned by magicians, by whose means they brag to effect marvelous things."

"As touching magical operations, I will grant them somewhat therein, finding divers histories that write thereof, and that the Bible maketh mention, and forbiddeth the use thereof: yea, the laws of the gentiles and ordinances of emperors have been made against it in such sort, that Mahomet, the great heretic and friend of the devil, by whose subtleties he abused most part of the east countries, hath ordained great punishments for such as use and practice those unlawful and damnable arts."

"If vengeance ever seemed to have any show of justice, it is then when piety and affection constraineth us to remember our fathers unjustly murdered, as the things whereby we are dispensed withal, and which seek the means not to leave treason and murder unpunished; seeing David, a holy and just king, and of nature simple, courteous, and debonair, yet when he died he charged his son Solomon (that succeeded him in his throne) not to suffer certain men that had done him injury to escape unpunished. Not that this holy king (as then ready to die, and to give account before God of all his actions) was careful or desirous of revenge, but to leave this example unto us, that where the prince or country is interested, the desire of revenge cannot by any means (how small soever) bear the title of condemnation, but is rather commendable and worthy of praise; for otherwise the good Kings of Judah, nor others had not pursued them to death, that had offended their predecessors, if God himself had not inspired and engraven that desire within their hearts. Hereof the Athenian laws bear witness, whose custom was to erect images in remembrance of those men that, revenging the injuries of the commonwealth, boldly massacred tyrants and such as troubled the peace and welfare of the citizens."

"[T]he diversities of opinions among that multitude of people being many, yet every man ignorant what would be the issue of that tragedy, none stirred from thence, neither yet attempted to move any tumult, every man fearing his own skin, and, distrusting his neighbor, esteeming each other to be consenting to the massacre."

"Who was ever sorrowful to behold the murderer of innocents brought to his end, or what man weepeth to see a just massacre done upon a tyrant, usurper, villain, and bloody personage?"

"I beseech you that shall read this history not to resemble the spider, that feedeth of the corruption that she findith in the flowers and fruits that are in the gardens, whereas the bee gathereth her honey out of the best and fairest flower she can find. For a man that is well brought up should read the lives of whoremongers, drunkards, incestuous, violent, and bloody persons, not to follow their steps and so to defile himself with such uncleanness, but to shun palliardise, abstain the superfluities and drunkenness in banquets, and follow the modesty, courtesy, and continency that recommendeth Hamlet in this discourse, who, while other made good cheer, continued sober; and where all men sought as much as they could to gather together riches and treasure, he, simply accounting riches nothing comparable to honor, sought to gather a multitude of virtues, that might make him equal to those that by them were esteemed as gods; having not as then received the light of the Gospel, that men might see among the barbarians, and them that were far from the knowledge of one only God, that nature was provoked to follow that which is good, and those forward to embrace virtue, for that there was never any nation, how rude or barbarous soever, that took not some pleasure to do that which seemed good, thereby to win praise and commendations, which we have said to be the reward of virtue and good life. I delight to speak of these strange histories, and of people that were unchristened, that the virtue of the rude people may give more splendor to our nation, who, seeing them so complete, wise, prudent, and well advised in their actions, might strive not only to follow (imitation being a small matter), but to surmount them, as our religion surpasseth their superstition, and our age more purged, subtle, and gallant, than the season wherein they lived and made their virtues known."

"Dis, cher aimé! Veux-tu venir vers ces pays où passent les caravanes, à l'ombre des palmiers de Kachmyr ou de Mysore? Veux-tu venir au Bengale choisir, dans les bazars, des roses, des étoffes et des filles d'Arménie, blanches comme le pelage des hermines? Veux-tu lever des armées soulever le nord de l'Iran, comme un jeune Cyaxare? Ou, plutôt, si nous appareillions pour Ceylan, où sont les blancs éléphants aux tours vermeilles, les aras de feu dans les feuillages, et d'en-soleillées demeures où tombent les pluies des jets d'eau dans les cours de marbre? [...] Quel plaisir d'attacher nos patins d'acier sur les routes de la pâle Suède! ou vers Christiania, dans les sentiers et les fjords éclatants des monts de la Norvège!"

"La Terre, dis-tu? Qu'a-t-elle donc jamais réalisé, cette goutte de fange glacée, dont l'Heure ne sait que mentir au milieu du ciel?"

"Vivre? les serviteurs feront cela pour nous."

"O Pluton, Rabelais reçoy, A fin que toy qui es le Roy De ceux qui ne rient jamais, Tu ais un rieur desormais."

"Absent le chat, les souris dansent."

"Squalidus hinc Within superas procedit ad auras. turtur ut exuvias mediis nudata pruinis primo vere redit,—vel, cum reditura iuventus implumes aquilas post multum sustinet aevum: illis deciduo spoliantur tegmine membra, perspicuamque aciem dudum tegit invida nubes, arma ruunt pedibus, frustantur guttura rostro, defessumque animum ref ovet spes nulla rapinae: sic Anglo, reducem dum cernit ab aequore lucem, calvities exesa apicem deterserat omnem, et cutis emissos excocta reliquerat ungues, palpebraque accrescens densas invexerat umbras, et nova lux oculos, tanta sub nocte gravatos, dum redit, offendit, nec cernere litus amoenum sufficiunt, ipsosque ruunt qui ex urbe propinquos vox vel sola manus, non visus munera produnt."

"Car mieills m'avetz ses doptanssa, Qe·l Vieills l'Asasina gen, Qu'il vant, neis s'eron part Franssa, Tant li son obedien, Aucir sos gerriers mortals."

"Si eu en soy desmentitz C'aysso no sia veritatz No n'er om per mi blasmatz Si per ver m'o contreditz; Ans vey sos sabers plus grans Si·m pot venser d'ayso segons rayso Qu'eu non say ges tot lo sen Salamo."

"Lady, for you great torment must I bear. Sir, you are foolish, for I do not care. Lady, for heaven's sake to me be kind. Sir, quite in vain your empty prayers you'll find. Good lady, I do love you faithfully. Good sir, and I dislike you utterly. Lady, my heart is therefore in distress. Sir, mine is ever light with happiness.Lady, all comfortless, I die for you. Sir, 'tis a task it takes you long to do. Lady, to live is worse than to bave died. Sir, since it harms me not, I'm satisfied. Lady, by you I am discouraged merely. Sir, do you therefore think I love you dearly? Lady, one glance my saving could effect. Sir, hope or comfort you need not expect.Lady, I go elsewhere to beg for grace. Sir, go! for who retains you in this place? Lady, for love of you I cannot go. 'Tis no affair of mine, sir, as you know. Lady, you answer me so harshly still. Sir, 'tis because I wish you every ill. Then, lady, I shall never see you kind? Sir, as you say: at last you know my mind."

"Love, you have cast me where I have no heed. For heaven's sake, my friend, do what you need. Love, you reward at last for every wound. Friend, I will therefore make you safe and sound. Love, why compel the choice of such a one? Friend, I will show you what had best be done. Love, I can't bear the pain that rends my heart. Friend, I will choose another for your part.Love, all you do I see is of no use. Friend, you do wrong to utter such abuse. Love, must I part from her? Then tell me why. Friend, 'tis because I grieve to see you die. Love, do not think my heart from her to lure. Friend, then resolve in patience to endure. Love, may I hope my happiness to gain? Friend, yes at last, through service and through pain."

"Good lady, I from you and Love receive Sense, knowledge, vigor, heart, good words and song; To you and Love the thanks and praise belong If anything of worth I may achieve, For you have given me this mastery."

"We are told that one great lord was so highly pleased with the first song of Aimeric de Pegulhan that he gave him his own palfrey and the very clothes he wore."

"Pauperat artificis Naturae dona venustas Tyndaridis, formae flosculus, oris honor. humanam faciem fastidit forma, decoris prodiga, siderea gratuitate nitens. nescia forma paris, odii praeconia, laudes iudicis invidiae promeruisse potest. auro respondet coma, non replicata magistro nodo, descensu liberiore iacet; dispensare iubar humeris permissa decorem explicat et melius dispatiata placet. pagina frontis habet quasi verba faventis, inescat visus, nequitiae nescia, labe carens. nigra supercilia via lactea separat, arcus dividui prohibent luxuriare pilos. stellis praeradiant oculi Venerisque ministri esse favorali simplicitate monent. candori socio rubor interfusus in ore militat, a roseo flore tributa petens. non hospes colit ora color, nec purpura vultus languescit, niveo disputat ore rubor. linea procedit naris non ausa iacere aut inconsulto luxuriare gradu. oris honor rosei suspirat ad oscula, risu succincta modico lege labella tument. pendula ne fluitent, modico succincta tumore plena Dioneo melle labella rubent. dentes contendunt ebori, serieque retenta ordinis esse pares in statione student. colla polita nivem certant superare, tumorem increpat et lateri parca mamilla sedet."

"Ce temps, si court, a des langueurs mortelles Quand l'âme oisive en compte les instans: C'est le travail qui lui donne des ailes."

"Dans les espaces immenses de l'erreur, la vérité n'est qu'un point. Qui l'a saisi, ce point unique?"

"Il n'est pas permis à tous les hommes d'être grands, mais ils peuvent tous être bons."

"L'éloquence est dans l'âme, et non dans la parole."

"Le ciel, l'enfer sont dans le cœur de l'homme."

"Où peut-on être mieux Qu'au sein de sa famille?"

"En général le ridicule touche au sublime, et pour marcher sur la limite qui les sépare, sans la passer jamais, il faut bien prendre garde à soi."

"Quand on n'a pas ce que l'on aime, il faut aimer ce que l'on a."

"En général le ridicule touche au sublime."

"Je reprends mon bien où je le trouve."

"Non, La Harpe au Serpent n'a jamais ressemble; Le Serpent siffle, et La Harpe est sifflé."

"Chloé, belle et poète, a deux petits travers: Elle fait son visage et ne fait pas ses vers."

"Bon Dieu! l'aimable siècle où l'homme dit à l'homme, Soyons frères—ou je t'assomme."

"L'esprit est le dieu des instans, Le génie est le dieu des âges."

"L'hymen est une maladie Qui n'a qu'une remède, l'Amour."

"Le papillon est une fleur qui vole, La fleur un papillon fixé."

"Le plus fidèle traducteur Est celui qui semble moins l'être. Qui suit pas à pas son auteur, N'est qu'un valet qui suit son maître."

"Nous avons de si riches plaines, Et de si fertiles côteaux, Disait un Gascon de Bordeaux, Que si l'on y plantait des gaines, Il y pousserait des couteaux."

"Oh, le maudit bavard! oh, le sot érudit! Il dit tout ce qu'il sait, et ne sait ce qu'il dit."

"Rien n'est plus sot, Domergue, qu'un sot rire."

"Et c'est dans la première flamme Qu'est tout le nectar du baiser."

"L'aimable siècle où l'homme dit à l'homme, Soyons frères, ou je t'assomme."