Philosophical Novels

"Je suis le meilleur homme du monde, et voilà déjà trois hommes que je tue; et dans ces trois il y a deux prêtres!"

"Je voulus cent fois me tuer, mais j’aimais encore la vie. Cette faiblesse ridicule est peut-être un de nos penchants les plus funestes; car y a t-il rien de plus sot que de vouloir porter continuellement un fardeau qu’on veut toujours jeter par terre? d’avoir son être en horreur, et de tenir à son être? enfin de caresser le serpent qui nous dévore, jusqu’à ce qu’il nous ait mangé le coeur?"

"Les captifs mes compagnons, ceux qui les avaient pris, soldats, matelots, noirs, basanés, blancs, mulâtres, et enfin mon capitaine, tout fut tué; et je demeurai mourante sur un tas de morts. Des scènes pareilles se passaient, comme on sait, dans l’étendue de plus de trois cents lieues, sans qu’on manquât aux cinq prières par jour ordonnées par Mahomet."

"Si c’est ici le meilleur des mondes possibles, que sont donc les autres?"

"Après le tremblement de terre qui avait détruit les trois quarts de Lisbonne, les sages du pays n’avaient pas trouvé un moyen plus efficace pour prévenir une ruine totale que de donner au peuple un bel auto-da-fé; il était décidé par l’université de Coïmbre que le spectacle de quelques personnes brûlées à petit feu, en grande cérémonie, est un secret infaillible pour empêcher la terre de trembler... Le même jour la terre trembla de nouveau avec un fracas épouvantable."

"Les malheurs particuliers font le bien général, de sorte que plus il y a de malheurs particuliers, et plus tout est bien."

"Pangloss enseignait la métaphysico-théologo-cosmolo-nigologie. Il prouvait admirablement qu’il n’y a point d’effet sans cause, et que, dans ce meilleur des mondes possibles, le château de monseigneur le baron était le plus beau des châteaux et madame la meilleure des baronnes possibles.'Il est démontré, disait-il, que les choses ne peuvent être autrement: car, tout étant fait pour une fin, tout est nécessairement pour la meilleure fin. Remarquez bien que les nez ont été faits pour porter des lunettes, aussi avons-nous des lunettes. Les jambes sont visiblement instituées pour être chaussées, et nous avons des chausses. Les pierres ont été formées pour être taillées, et pour en faire des châteaux, aussi monseigneur a un très beau château; le plus grand baron de la province doit être le mieux logé; et, les cochons étant faits pour être mangés, nous mangeons du porc toute l’année: par conséquent, ceux qui ont avancé que tout est bien ont dit une sottise; il fallait dire que tout est au mieux."

"Cela est bien dit, rèpondit Candide, mais il faut cultiver notre jardin."

"Travaillons sans raisonner, dit Martin; c’est le seul moyen de rendre la vie supportable."

"Vous devez avoir, dit Candide au Turc, une vaste et magnifique terre? — Je n’ai que vingt arpents, répondit le Turc; je les cultive avec mes enfants; le travail éloigne de nous trois grands maux: l’ennui, le vice, et le besoin."

"Il y avait dans le voisinage un derviche très fameux, qui passait pour le meilleur philosophe de la Turquie; ils allèrent le consulter; Pangloss porta la parole, et lui dit: Maître, nous venons vous prier de nous dire pourquoi un aussi étrange animal que l’homme a été formé. — De quoi te mêles-tu? dit le derviche, est-ce là ton affaire? — Mais, mon Révérend Père, dit Candide, il y a horriblement de mal sur la terre. — Qu’importe, dit le derviche, qu’il y ait du mal ou du bien? Quand sa Hautesse envoie un vaisseau en Égypte, s’embarrasse-t-elle si les souris qui sont dans le vaisseau sont à leur aise ou non? — Que faut-il donc faire? dit Pangloss. — Te taire, dit le derviche."

"Quand les deux curieux eurent pris congé de Son Excellence: Or çà, dit Candide à Martin, vous conviendrez que voilà le plus heureux de tous les hommes, car il est au-dessus de tout ce qu’il possède. — Ne voyez-vous pas, dit Martin, qu’il est dégoûté de tout ce qu’il possède? Platon a dit, il y a longtemps, que les meilleurs estomacs ne sont pas ceux qui rebutent tous les aliments. — Mais, dit Candide, n’y a-t-il pas du plaisir à tout critiquer, à sentir des défauts où les autres hommes croient voir des beautés? — C’est-à-dire, reprit Martin, qu’il y a du plaisir à n’avoir pas de plaisir?"

"Il est beau d’écrire ce qu’on pense; c’est le privilège de l’homme."

"Les sots admirent tout dans un auteur estimé. Je ne lis que pour moi; je n'aime que ce qui est à mon usage."

""Oh bliss, bliss and heaven... Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh... And then, a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal, or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now... I knew such lovely pictures" (This was said while listening to a violin concerto by Geoffrey Plautus, played by Odysseus Choerilos)"

"Have you some new torture for me, you bratchny?"

"Let's get things nice and sparkling clear. This sarcasm - if I may call it such, is very unbecoming of you oh my brothers"

"Welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, well. To what do I owe the extreme pleasure of this surprising visit?"

"Come with uncle," I said, "and hear all proper. Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones. You are invited."

"What's it going to be then, eh?"

""One thing I could never stand was to see a filthy dirty old drunky howling away at the filthy songs of his fathers and going blurp blurp in between as it might be a filthy old orchestra in his stinking rotten guts;I could never stand to see anyone like that. whatever his age might be, but more especially when he was real old like this one was."

"The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultraviolence."

"There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening."

"When I was in high school, my English teacher gave me a copy of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. I was in awe of the use of slang and the portrayal of youth and violence. It was an example of what great fiction can do. I knew I would eventually want to write my own version of what it is like to be young and full of rage."

"[To Alex as a Police Officer] Long time is right, I don't remember them days too horrorshow. Don't call me Dim no more either, Officer call me."

"[About Alex] What natural right does he have to think he can give the orders and tolchock me whenever he likes? Yarbles is what I say to him, and I'd chain his glazzies out soon as look."

"Choice... He has no real choice, has he? Self-interest, the fear of physical pain drove him to that grotesque act of self-abasement. Its insincerity was clearly to be seen. He ceases to be a wrongdoer. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice."

""Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses to be bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?"

"When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man."

"A lot of idiots you are, selling your own birthright for a saucer of cold porridge! The thrill of theft! Of violence! The urge to live easy! Well, I ask you what is it worth when we have undeniable truth, yes, incontrovertible evidence that Hell exists."

"Don't you laugh, damn you, don't you laugh!"

"“We study the problem and we’ve been studying it for damn well near a century, yes, but we get no further with our studies. You’ve got a good home here, good loving parents. You’ve got not too bad of a brain. Is it some devil that crawls inside of you?”"

"But I'm warning you, little Alex, being a good friend to you as always, the one man in this sore and sick community who wants to save you from yourself."

"The attempt to impose upon man, a creature of growth and capable of sweetness, to ooze juicily at the last round the bearded lips of God, to attempt to impose, I say, laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my sword-pen."

"“The common people will let it go. Oh yes, they’ll sell liberty for a quieter life. That is why they must be led, sir, driven, pushed!”"

"He's young, bold, vicious. Brodsky will deal with him tomorrow and you can sit in and watch Brodsky. It works all right, don't you worry about that. This young hoodlum will be transformed out of all recognition."

"“Padre, these are subtleties. We’re not concerned with motives, with the higher ethics. We are concerned only with cutting down crime--and. . .with relieving the ghastly congestion in our prisons. He will be your true Christian: ready to turn the other cheek, ready to be crucified rather than crucify, sick to the very heart at the thought even of killing a fly! Reclamation! Joy before the angels of God! The point is that it works.”"

"There was a man. . .a writer of subversive literature."

""Then I looked at its top sheet, and there was the name -A CLOCKWORK ORANGE- and I said: 'That's a fair gloopy title. Who ever heard of a clockwork orange?'"

"I creeched louder still, creeching: 'Am I just to be like a clockwork orange?'"

"Well, well, well, well. If it isn't fat, stinking billygoat Billy-Boy in poison. How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap, stinking chip-oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if you have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly thou."

"Suddenly, I viddied what I had to do, and what I had wanted to do, and that was to do myself in; to snuff it, to blast off for ever out of this wicked, cruel world. One moment of pain perhaps and, then, sleep forever, and ever and ever."

"It’s funny how the colours of the real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen."

"You needn't take it any further, sir. You've proved to me that all this ultraviolence and killing is wrong, wrong, and terribly wrong. I've learned me lesson, sir. I've seen now what I've never seen before. I'm cured! Praise Bog! I'm cured!"

"What we were after now was the old surprise visit. That was a real kick and good for laughs and lashings of the old ultraviolence."

"Naughty, Naughty, Naughty you filthy ol' soomka!"

"Initiative comes to them as wait."

"I want a good hotel, and I have certain standards of what is good, and they're my own, and you're the one who can give me what I want. And when I fight for you, I’m doing—on my side of it—just what you do when you design a building. Do you think integrity is the monopoly of the artist? And what, incidentally, do you think integrity is? The ability not to pick a watch out of your neighbor’s pocket? No, it's not as easy as that. If that were all, I'd say ninety-five percent of humanity were honest, upright men. Only, as you can see, they aren't. Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea. That presupposes the ability to think. Thinking is something one doesn't borrow or pawn. […] Don't worry. They're all against me. But I have one advantage: they don't know what they want. I do."

"When facing society, the man most concerned, the man who is to do the most and contribute the most, has the least to say. It's taken for granted that he has no voice and the reasons he could offer are rejected in advance as prejudiced—since no speech is ever considered, but only the speaker. It's so much easier to pass judgment on a man than on an idea. Though how in hell one passes judgment on a man without considering the content of his brain is more than I'll ever understand. However, that's how it's done."

"The causes of illusions are not pretty to discover. They’re either vicious or tragic."