Notes de Lecture

Someone taught that temples are for fanatics only and took away the temples and promised there was no need for temples. And now there is no shelter. And no map for finding the shelter of a temple. And you all stumble about in the dark, this confusion of permissions. The without-end pursuit of a happiness of which someone let you forget the old thing which made happiness possible.

L’inconnu fut assailli par mille pensées semblables, qui passaient en lambeaux dans son âme, comme des drapeaux déchirés voltigent au milieu d’une bataille

Dire qu'il n'y a rien de juste ni d'injuste que ce qu'ordonnent ou défendent les lois positives, c'est dire qu'avant qu'on eût tracé de cercle, tous les rayons n'étaient pas égaux.

We need no reminder to smile. A smile is permanently graven on our features, and we already know from which of several angles it photographs to best advantage.

Though leaves are many, the root is one; Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun; Now I may wither into the truth.

Almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of Psst that you usually can't even hear because you're in such a rush to or from something important you've tried to engineer.

Talent is its own expectation, Jim: you either live up to it or it waves a hankie, receding forever.

You seek to vanquish and transcend the limited self whose limits make the game possible in the first place. It is tragic and sad and chaotic and lovely. All life is the same, as citizens of the human State: the animating limits are within, to be killed and mourned, over and over again.

Outstare the stars. Infinite foretime and Infinite aftertime: above your head They close like giant wings, and you are dead.

Je veux que la valeur se montre dans les occasions légitimes, et qu'on ne se hâte pas d'en faire hors de propos une vaine parade comme si l'on avait peur de ne pas la retrouver au besoin.

When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul ?

I never felt right being alone; sometimes it felt good but it never felt right.

At present, people see fogs, not because there are fogs, but because poets and painters have taught them the mysterious loveliness of such effects. [...] Now, it must be admitted, fogs are carried to excess. They have become the mere mannerism of a clique, and the exaggerated realism of their method gives dull people bronchitis. Where the cultured catch an effect, the uncultured catch cold.

The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won't do.

A mass of Latin words fall upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details.

What are called advanced ideas are really in great part but the latest fashion in definition - a more accurate expression, by words in logy and ism, of sensations which men and women have vaguely grasped for centuries.

Le sens de l'évolution est clair. Le temps de la fleur est passé. Il faut devenir fruit, il faut devenir graine. Le piège matrimonial referme bientôt ses mâchoires sur le niais. Et le voilà attelé avec les autres au lourd charroi de la propagation de l'espèce, contraint d'apporter sa contribution à la grande diarrhée démographique dont l'humanité est en train de crever.