Anathemas and Admirations (10 page)

The Germans do not see that it is absurd to put a Pascal and a Heidegger in the same bag. The abyss yawns between a
Schicksal
and a
Beruf
, between a destiny and a profession.

A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech.

To have nothing more in common with men than the fact of being a man!

A sensation must have fallen very low to deign to turn into an idea.

Believing in God dispenses one from believing in anything else — which is an estimable advantage. I have always envied those who believed in Him, though to believe oneself God seems easier to me than believing
in
God.

A word, once dissected, no longer signifies anything, is nothing. Like a body that, after the autopsy, is less than a corpse.

Each desire provokes in me a counterdesire, so that whatever I do, all that matters is what I have not done.

Sarvam anityam
: All is transitory (Buddha). A formula one should repeat at every hour of the day, at the — admirable — risk of dying of it.

Some diabolic thirst keeps me from exposing my pact with breathing.

To lose sleep and to change language: two ordeals, one not dependent on oneself, the other deliberate. Alone, face to face with the nights and with words.

The healthy are not real. They have everything except
being
— which is uniquely conferred by uncertain health.

Of all the ancients, Epicurus may have been best at disdaining the mob — one more reason for celebrating him. What a notion, to place a clown like Diogenes in so lofty a niche! It is the Garden in question I should have haunted, and not the marketplace, nor — a fortiori — the tub. . . . (Yet Epicurus himself has disappointed me more than once: does he not call Theognis of Megara a fool for proclaiming it was better not to be born or, once born, to pass as soon as possible through the gates of Hades?)