Anathemas and Admirations (56 page)

In the still of certain nights, for lack of a confidant, we are reduced to the One who played this part for centuries, for millennia.

Irony, that nuanced, rancorous impertinence, is the art of being able to stop. The merest probe beneath the surface destroys it. If you have a tendency to insist, you run the risk of capsizing with it.

What is marvelous is that each day brings us a new reason to disappear.

Since the only things we remember are humiliations and defeats, what is the use of all the rest?

To inquire into the basis of anything makes one long to throw oneself on the ground. In any case, that is how I used to answer the crucial questions, questions without an answer.

Opening this textbook on prehistory, I come across some specimens of our ancestors, as grim as could be. Doubtless they had to be so. Disgusted and ashamed, I quickly close the book, realizing I will open it again whenever I want to dwell on the genesis of our horrors and our filth.

The secret life of anti-life, and this chemical comedy, instead of inclining us to smile, gnaws at our vitals and maddens us.

The need to devour oneself absolves one of the need to believe.

If fury were an attribute of the Almighty, I should long since have transcended my mortal status.

Existence might be justified if each of us behaved as if he were the last man alive.

Ignatius of Loyola, tormented by scruples whose nature he does not specify, tells us that he considered destroying himself. Even he! This temptation is certainly more wide-spread and more deeply rooted than is realized. It is in fact the honor of mankind, until it becomes the duty.

To create: only someone mistaken about himself, someone ignorant of the secret motives behind his actions,
creates
. Once the creator is transparent to himself, he no longer creates. Self-knowledge antagonizes the
demon
. Here is where we must seek out the reason that Socrates wrote nothing.

That we can be wounded by the very people we despise discredits pride.