Anathemas and Admirations (4 page)

Claudel’s famous edict: “I am for every Jupiter, against every Prometheus,” We may have lost our illusions about revolt, yet such an enormity wakens the terrorist slumbering in us all.

One holds no grudges against those one has insulted; quite the contrary, one is disposed to grant them every imaginable virtue. Alas, such generosity is never to be met with in the injured party.

I haven’t much use for anyone who can spare Original Sin. Myself, I resort to it on every occasion, and without it I don’t see how I should avoid uninterrupted consternation.

Kandinsky maintains that
yellow
is the color of life. . . . Now we know why this hue so hurts the eyes.

When we must make a crucial decision, it is extremely dangerous to consult anyone else, since no one, with the exception of a few misguided souls, sincerely wishes us well.

To invent new words, according to Madame de Staël, is the “surest symptom of intellectual sterility,” The remark seems truer today than it was at the beginning of the last century. As early as 1649, Vaugelas decreed, “No one may create new words, not even the sovereign,” Let writers, and especially philosophers, ponder this ban even before they start thinking!

We learn more in one white night than in a year of sleep. Practically speaking, the adoption of tobacco is much more instructive than any number of regular naps.

The earaches Swift suffered from are partly responsible for his misanthropy. If I am so interested in others’ infirmities, it is because I want to find immediate points in common with them. I sometimes feel I have shared all the agonies of those I admire.

This morning, after hearing an astronomer mention “billions of suns,” I renounced my morning ablutions: what is the use of washing one more time?

Boredom is indeed a form of anxiety, but an anxiety purged of fear. When we are bored we dread nothing except boredom itself.

Anyone who has passed through an ordeal patronizes those who have not had to undergo it. . . . The intolerable fatuity of patients who have survived an operation . . .