580 quotes found
“He knew now that it was his own will to happiness which must make the next move. But if he was to do so, he realized that he must come to terms with time, that to have time was at once the most mag...”
“…. Query: How contrive not to waste one's time?Answer: By being fully aware of it all the while.Ways in which this can be done: By spending one's days on an uneasy chair in a dentist's waiting-room...”
“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not followDon’t walk behind me… I may not leadWalk beside me… just be my friend”
“…Having been, not only mutilated in our country, wounded in our very flesh, but also divested of our most beautiful images, for you gave the world a hateful and ridiculous version of them. The most...”
“The only deep emotion I occasionally felt in these affairs was gratitude, when all was going well and I was left, not only peace, but freedom to come and go--never kinder and gayer with one woman t...”
“Women naturally prefer their ideas to their sensations.”
“For him, too, starting over, departures, a new life had a certain luster, but he knew that only the impotent and the lazy attach happiness to such things. Happiness implied a choice, and within tha...”
“There is something divine in mindless beauty, and Mersault was particularly responsive to it.”
“My soul’s a burden to me, I’ve had enough of it. I’m eager to be in that country, where the sun kills every question. I don’t belong here.”
“The cats sleep for days at a time and make love from the first star until dawn. Their pleasures are fierce, and their sleep impenetrable. And they know that the body has a soul in which the soul ha...”
“[…] Everyone tries to make his life a work of art. We want love to last and we know that it does not last; even if, by some miracle, it were to last a whole lifetime, it would still be incomplete. ...”
“Let us seek the respite where it is—in the very thick of battle. For in my opinion, and this is where I shall close, it is there. Great ideas, it has been said, come into the world as gently as dov...”
“I sometimes try to imagine what future historians will say about us. They'll be able to sum up modern man in a single sentence: he fornicated and read the papers. After that robust description, I s...”
“Gula and Cali lie on their sides, their tiny adder-mouths showing the pink of their palates, their bodies throbbing with lustful and obscene dreams. The sky releases its burden of sun and color. Ey...”
“I have realized that we all have plague, and I have lost my peace. And today I am still trying to find it; still trying to understand all those others and not to be the enemy of anyone. I only know...”
“I would like to be able to breathe— to be able to love her by memory or fidelity. But my heart aches. I love you continuously, intensely.”
“But the heart has its own memory and I have forgotten nothing.”
“It is not true that the heart wears out — but the body creates this illusion.”
“What he had loved in Marthe were those evenings when they would walk into the movie theater and men's eyes turned toward her, that moment when he offered her to the world. What he loved in her was ...”
“The world always says the same thing. And in that patient truth which proceeds from star to star is established a freedom that releases us from ourselves and from others, as in that other patient t...”
