“The peculiar vanity of man, who wants to believe and who wants other people to believe that he is seeking after truth, when in fact it is love that he is asking this world to give him.”
“The only liberty possible is liberty as regards death. The really free man is the one who, accepting death as it is, at the same time accepts its consequences—that is to say, the abolition of all life s traditional values. Ivan Karamazov s Everything is permitted is the only expression there is of a coherent liberty. And we must follow out all the consequences of his remark.”
“If to love implies spending one s life loving, and creating a particular kind of life, then pure love is a love which is dead. It becomes nothing more than a point of reference, and we still need to seek an understanding about all the rest”
“For a man who is nobly born, happiness lies in taking on the fate of everyman; not through a desire for renunciation but a will to happiness. To be happy, you need time. Lots of time. Happiness too is a long patience. And it is the need for money that robs us of time. Time can be bought. Everything can be bought. To be rich means having time to be happy when you are worthy of happiness.”
“You would not write about loneliness so much if you knew how to get the most out of it”
“To keep going to the end means not only resisting but also relaxing. I need to be aware of myself, in so far as this is also an awareness of something that goes beyond me as an individual. I sometimes need to write things which I cannot completely control but which therefore prove that what is in me is stronger than I am.”
“Every time I hear a political speech or I read those of our leaders, I am horrified at having, for years, heard nothing which sounded human. It is always the same words telling the same lies. And the fact that men accept this, that the people s anger has not destroyed these hollow clowns, strikes me as proof that men attribute no importance to the way the are governed; that they gamble—yes, gamble—with a whole part of their life and their so called vital interest.”
“Every time I hear a political speech or I read those of our leaders, I am horrified at having, for years, heard nothing which sounded human. It is always the same words telling the same lies. And the fact that men accept this, that the people s anger has not destroyed these hollow clowns, strikes me as proof that men attribute no importance to the way they are governed; that they gamble—yes, gamble—with a whole part of their life and their so called vital interest.”
“I spent a long time looking at faces, drinking in smiles. Am I happy or unhappy? It s not very important question. I live with such frenzied intensity.”
“The clouds thicken over the cloister and night gradually darkens the ledger stones bearing the moral virtues attributed to the dead. If I had to write a book on morality, it would have a hundred pages and ninety-nine would be blank. On the last page I should write: I recognize only one duty, and that is to love. And, as far as everything else is concerned, I say no. I say no with all my strength.”
“Today, I feel free about the past and about what I have lost. All I want is this compactness and enclosed space—this lucid and patient fervor. And like the warm bread that one kneads and presses I simply want to hold my life between my hands, like the men who knew how to enclose their life between these flowers and these columns. The same is true of those long nights spent on trains, where one can talk to oneself, prepare oneself for life, and feel marvelously patient in taking up ideas again, stopping them in their fight, and then once more moving forward. To lick one s life like a stick of barley sugar, to form, sharpen, and finally fall in love with it, in the same way as one searches for the word, the image, the definitive sentence, the word or image which marks a close or a conclusion, from which one can start out again and which will color the way we see the world. I can easily stop now, and finally reach the end of a year of unrestrained and over restrained life. My effort now is to carry this presence of myself to myself through to the very end, to maintain it whatever aspect my life takes on—even at the price of the loneliness which I know is so difficult to bear. Not to give way—that is the whole secret. Not to surrender, not to betray. All the violent part of my character helps me in this, carrying me to the point where I am rejoined by my love, and by the furious passion for life which gives meaning to my days.”
“I am uncertain of the future, but have achieved total liberty toward my past and toward myself. Here lies my poverty, and my sole wealth. It is as if I were beginning the game all over again, neither happier nor unhappier than before. But aware now of where my strength lies, scornful of my own vanities, and filled with that lucid fervor which impells me forward toward my fate.”
“In the local movie theater, you can buy mint-flavored lozenges with the words: Will you marry me one day? Do you love me written on them, together with the replies: This evening, A lot, etc. You pass them to the girl next to you, who replies in the same way. Lives become linked together by an exchange of mint lozenges.”
“November 16. He said: We must have one love, one great love in our life, since it gives us an alibi for all the moments when we are filled with motiveless despair.”
“For a man who is nobly born, happiness lies in taking on the fate of everyman, not through a desire for renunciation but a will to happiness. To be happy, you need time. Lots of time. Happiness too is a long patience. And it is the need for money that robs us of time. Time can be bought. Everything can be bought. To be rich means having time to be happy when you are worthy of happiness.”
“One thinks differently about the same thing in the morning and in the evening. But where is the truth, in the night thought or in the spirit of midday? Two replies, two races of men.”
“The only liberty possible is a liberty as regards death. The really free man is the one who, accepting death as it is, at the same time accepts its consequences—that is to say, the abolition of all life s traditional values. Ivan Karamazov s Everything is permitted is the only expression there is of a coherent liberty. And we must follow out all the consequences of his remark.”