Anathemas and Admirations (62 page)

If from time to time we are tempted by faith, it is because faith proposes an alternative humiliation: it is, after all, preferable to find oneself in a position of inferiority before a god than before a hominid.

We can console someone only by following the direction of his affliction, to the point where the afflicted man can endure being so no longer.

So many memories that loom up without apparent necessity — of what use are they, except to show us that with age we are becoming external to our own life, that these remote “events” no longer have anything to do with us, and that one day the same will be true of this life itself?

The mystic’s “all is nothing” is merely a preliminary to the absorption in that
all
which becomes miraculously existent— that is, really
all
. This conversion was not to function in me, the positive, luminous portion of mysticism having been denied me.

Between the demand to be clear and the temptation to be obscure, impossible to decide which deserves more respect.

Having scrutinized those we must envy, to realize we would willingly exchange fates with no one: everyone reacts in this way. Then how explain that envy is the oldest and least threadbare of infirmities?

Not easy to avoid resentment of a friend who has insulted you during a fit of madness. Though you keep telling yourself that
he was not himself
you react as if, for once, he had revealed a well-kept secret.

If Time were a patrimony, a
possession
, death would be the worst form of theft.

Not taking revenge only half flatters us, considering that we never know whether our behavior is based on nobility or on cowardice.

Knowledge, or the crime of indiscretion.

No use counting on the windfall of being alone — always escorted by oneself!

Without will, no conflict: no tragedy among the abulic. Yet the failure of will can be experienced more painfully than a tragic destiny.

We come to terms one way or another with any fiasco, with the exception of death, fiasco itself.