Posterity is a schoolboy who is condemned to learn a hundred verses by
heart. He learns ten of them and mumbles a few syllables of the rest.
The ten are glory; the rest is literary history.
Traditions? Of course, tradition. But do you not believe that there is
a beginning to everything, even to tradition?
Anti-clericalism works for the benefit of the dissident sect. In
England, religious radicalism recruits Catholics; in France it recruits
Protestants.
Man can no more see the world than a fish can see the river bank.
Many a time have I written the word "beauty," but almost never without
being conscious of writing down an absurdity. There are beautiful
things, but there is no such thing as Beauty: that is an abridged
expression. It cannot be taken in an absolute sense; there is no
Absolute.
Civilization is the cultivation of everything that Christianity calls
vice....
For two thousand years Christianity, impudently playing with the
meaning of words, has been telling us: Life is death, death is life. It
is time to consult the dictionary.
Politics depends upon statesmen in about the same measure that the
weather depends upon astronomers.
There are two courses open to the prophet: either to announce a future
in conformity with the past,--or to be mistaken.
An imbecile is never bored: he contemplates himself.
Nothing is better for "spiritual advancement" and the detachment of the
flesh than a close reading of the "Erotic Dictionary."
The greater part of men who speak ill of women are speaking ill of a
certain woman.
The man of genius may dwell unknown, but one always may recognize the
path he has followed into the forest. It was a giant who passed that
way. The branches are broken at a height that other men cannot reach.
_Werther_ possesses great interest because Goethe afterward wrote
_Faust, Wilhelm Meister_, and so many other works, all different. The
_Werther_ of those who revamp their first book fifteen or thirty times
loses with each new work a little of its initial worth; after the
third book it is worth almost nothing. At first, however, one cannot
tell whether that _Werther_ is the product of a brain or of a mould;
that is why the first book is sacred.
An unnamable critic notes some of the flaming errors of Verhaeren,--a
few "among a hundred others." It is thither, toward the error, toward
the stain, toward the wound, that the mediocre spirit, like the fly,
wings its way unerringly. He looks at neither the eyes, the hair,
the hands, the throat, nor all the grace of the woman passing by; he
sees only, the mud with which some churl has bespattered her gown; he
rejoices at the sight; he would like to see the spot grow and devour
both the gown and the flesh of its wearer; he would have everything as
ugly, as dirty and despicable as himself.
Dialogue.--GOD: Who has made you man? MAN: Who has made you God?
Religions turn madly about sexual questions.
The world will never forgive the Jews for having disdained the religion
which they gave to the world. There is in this a sort of intellectual
treason which reminds one of those merchants who do not wear, or eat,
or drink their own merchandise.
When one comes to define the philosophy of the nineteenth century, one
will discover that it was only theology.
An opinion is shocking only when it is a conviction.
Nothing so imparts the satisfaction of having accomplished one's duty
as a good night's sleep, an excellent meal, a beautiful moment of love.
What is life? A series of sensations. What is a sensation? A
remembrance.
One does n't live. One has lived. Life, said an old man, is a regret.
The terrible thing about the quest for truth is that you find it.
There are things which one must have the courage not to write.
As to possessing the truth: I think of those explorers who have with
them a tame lion, and who sleep with one eye open.
Those men who live with the greatest intensity are often the ones who
seem to take least interest in life.
To have a solid foundation of skepticism,--that is to say, the faculty
of changing at any moment, of turning back, of facing successively the
metamorphoses of life.
Learning for learning's sake is perhaps as coarse as eating for
eating's sake.
It is a singular thing: in literature, when the form is not new,
neither is the content.
Man is an animal that "arrived"; that is all.
It was an accident that endowed man with intelligence. He has made use
of it: he invented stupidity.
Sexual modesty is an advance over the exhibitionism of monkeys.
Modesty is the delicate form of hypocrisy.
Nothing so softens the obduracy of chaste hearts as the certainty of
secrecy.
The notion that the dead are not dead assumes, in the crowd, comical
forms. I read in a novel (1901): "Madeleine read the letter over again.
M. Piot was dead, the poor man! How cold he must be in that north
wind!" Men are stupid.
You have doubts? About what? About whom? About God? Why, that's a very
simple matter: write to him.--I haven't his address.--Such, in fact, is
the state of the question.
Revolutionary socialists make me think of the fellow who, having a
piano that was out of tune, would say: "Let's smash this piano and
throw the pieces into the fire; in its place we'll install an Aeolian
harp."
Christianity has already won three great victories: Constantine, the
Reform, the Revolution. A fourth is being awaited, Collectivism, after
which it is probable that the Strong, wearied at last of being bullied,
will revolt against the Weak and reduce them to slavery--once again.
Property is necessary; but it is not necessary that it should forever
remain in the same hands.
To ameliorate and raise the standard of the workingmen to the bourgeois
level, is perhaps to create a race of slaves content with their
lot,--a cast of comfortable Pariahs.
Thought harms the loins. One cannot at the same time carry burdens and
ideas.
Said Sixtus: "Believe in nothing, not even the trade you follow, not
even the hand you caress, the eyes in which you are mirrored, not even
yourself,--above all, not in yourself."
The true philosopher does not desire to see his ideas applied. He knows
that they would be ill carried out, deformed, vulgarized. If need be,
he would actually oppose such a course: this has happened.
Modesty is a timid confession of pride.
The ill are always optimistic. Perhaps optimism itself is an illness.
There is a simulation of intelligence, just as there is a simulation of
virtue.
Mr. X used to say: "Some people need a great deal in order to retain a
little; as for me, I need a little to retain a great deal."
Science is worth what the scientist is worth.
Scholars spread the rumor that science is impersonal. Scholars? They
are scholars as much as the masons are architects.
The people may make uprisings; but revolutions, never. Revolutions
always come from above.
Descartes wrote to Balzac: "Every day I walk amidst an immense people,
almost as tranquilly as you may walk in your lanes. The men I meet
produce upon me the same impression as if I were gazing upon the trees
of your forests or the flocks of your country-side." All the weakness
of the metaphysicians is explained by these two scornful sentences.
In order to understand life it is not only necessary not to be
indifferent to men, but not to be indifferent to flocks, to trees. One
should be indifferent to nothing.
The superstition which, among the ancients, caused them to look upon
new-born weaklings, lame, blind and hunchbacked infants, as tokens of
divine anger, and to sacrifice them, was happier than the religious or
scientific sentimentality that tolerates them, brings them up, making
of them half-men and introducing eternal germs of decrepitude among the
race.
Pity is perhaps at bottom only cowardice. We pity only ourselves or
those whom we fear.
Nietzsche stupefies. Why? Calm reflection will show that he almost
always expresses common-sense truths.
Nietzsche was a revealer, in the new photographic sense. Contact with
his work has brought to light truths that were slumbering in men's
minds.
Happiness, like wealth, has its parasites.
One does not dwell in a house; one dwells in himself.
Put a pig in a palace and he'll make a pen of it.
Paul Bourget still believes in duchesses. What is there astonishing
about that? There are many people who believe in ghosts.
The crowd has no idea of how much sensibility, and intelligence it
requires to enjoy the perfume of a rose or the smile of a woman.
Sainte-Beuve is too scholarly. He cannot stand nude before a nude
statue; he has to have pockets from which to take out note-books and
papers.
A woman sometimes feels pity for the sorrows that she causes
remorselessly.
The little girl expects no declaration of tenderness from her doll. She
loves it, and that's all. It is thus that we should love.
The craze for decorations has reached such a height that actors, they
say, are proud to play the rôle of an Officer of the Legion of Honor.
I'm very fond of going to the butcher shop and looking at a sheep's
brains. We have in our heads a reddish sponge of the same kind, which
thinks.
Love disposes one to religiosity. I knew an atheist who wished to go
to church one evening to exchange vows with his mistress; through
scruples, she refused.
Intelligence is perhaps but a malady,--a beautiful malady; the oyster's
pearl.
There are anti-clericals who are in reality somewhat excessive
Christians.
Is not the poet who recites his verses before an audience really the
nightingale singing his song? Not quite. The instinct has gone astray:
sexual mimicry, without actual application. The useful has become a
game: and this is the whole history of civilization.
"How many contradictions!"
"Eh! If I loaded my wagon all on the same side, I'd tumble it over."
Persons full of morality preach. Everything that they judge criminal I
either practise or think. And nevertheless....
Love ye one another. How do that, without knowing one another? No, no;
a little modesty, a little dignity.
It is shameful to be ashamed of one's pleasures.
To be above everything. To scorn everything and love everything. To
know that there is nothing, and that this nothing, none the less,
contains everything.
In order to be true, a novel must be false.
To be impersonal is to be personal in a particular manner: for
instance, Flaubert. In the literary jargon one would say: the objective
is one of the forms of the subjective.
Proudhon said: "After the persecutors, I know nothing more hateful than
the martyrs." Not having thought of this myself, I feel pleasure in
copying it.
To be seen. The man of letters loves not only to be read but to be
seen. Happy to be by himself, he would be happier still if people knew
that he was happy to be by himself, working in solitude at night under
his lamp; and he would be indeed happiest of all if, after he has
closed his door, his servant should open it for a visitor and show to
the importunate fellow, through the chink, the man of letters happy to
be by himself.
Man begins by loving love and ends by loving a woman.
Woman begins by loving a man and ends by loving love.
Said a country vicar to a fanatically scrupulous devotee: "God is not
so silly as that."
He has known Claude Bernard, Flaubert, Barbey d'Aurevilly, Goncourt,
Manet, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Renan, Taine, Pasteur, Verlaine, Tarde,
Mallarmé, Puvis de Chavannes, Marey, Gauguin, Curie, Berthelot; he
knows Rodin, Ribot, Renoir, France, Quinton, Monet, Poincaré,--and he
complains! He bewails his country's decadence: The ingrate!
Nietzsche opened the gate. Now one may walk straight into the orchard
of which, before him, it was necessary to scale the walls.
I am vexed that people should have thought so many things before me. I
seem like a reflection. But perhaps some day I'll cause another man to
repeat the same thing.
I do not vouch for the fact that none of these observations may be
found in my previous writings, or that none will figure in any future
work. They may even be found in writings that are not mine.