The Age Of Reason Quotes
"It’s all rot: it’s the sort of thing that people don’t say."
"He had succeeded in completely emptying his head. But that emptiness still had a savour of its own."
"How frightening it was to be a little ball of breadcrumb in this ancient fire-browned world."
"Seated in the shade of the pines...he felt somehow like a little explosive entity suspended in the atmosphere, spherical compact, mysterious."
"I will be free...it was in the nature of a bet."
"I must be free: I must be self-impelled, and able to say: 'I am, because I will: I am my own beginning.'"
"I am now empty, it is true, but I am waiting for nothing."
"Youth is fantastic: so vivid on the surface, but no feeling inside it."
"One is liable to be fooled: and he didn’t want to act in that way."
"I never knew I was young, nor did Brunet, nor did Daniel."
"I feel as if they were being pricked with pins. Oh, how I hate the summer."
"You’re settled, and you won’t change for all the money in the world."
"I wonder what is on her mind: never have I known her so tiresome."
"A human being who wakened in the morning with a queasy stomach, with fifteen hours to kill before next bed-time, had not much use for freedom."
"They were not quite alive. They looked as if they had been caught in the process of transforming themselves into objects."
"You have spent thirty-five years cleaning yourself up, and the result is nil. You are an odd sort of creature, you know. You live in a void, you have cut your bourgeois connexions, you have no tie with the proletariat, you're adrift, you're an abstraction, a man who is not there."
"I enjoy feeling fastidious and aloof. I enjoy saying no, always no, and I should be afraid of any attempt to construct a finally habitable world, because I should merely have to say — Yes; and act like other people."
"You refuse to regularize the position, which you find quite easy. If anyone suffers from all this, it isn't you."
"I should myself have thought that freedom consisted in frankly confronting situations into which one had deliberately entered, and accepting all one's responsibilities."
"If you're counting on an inner inspiration to make up your mind, you may have to wait a long time. A conviction has to be created."
"You condemn capitalist society, and yet you are an official in that society; you display an abstract sympathy with Communists, but you take care not to commit yourself, you have never voted."
"He thinks he knows me, he talks of my lies, my velvet eyes. He doesn’t know me in the least, but he likes to label me as if I were an object."
"You aren’t compelled to think as I do, if he isn't a rotter. You regard me as a rotter, but you won’t tell me so, because you view the case as desperate."
"I don't want her to get into a mess," said Mathieu, with a set and obstinate expression.
"I don't say it's your fault, mark you: in my view it's your principles that are to blame."
"The sun began to plaster gold on to the great black buildings, the sky was filled with gold, but a soft and liquid shadow rose up from the street, and the people smiled at its caresses."
"Daniel was devoured by thirst but he would not drink: die, then! die of thirst."
"After all," he thought, "I haven't done anything wrong."
"Peace. The peace of good and honest folk, the peace of men of goodwill."
"Why is their will good, and not mine? It couldn’t be helped, it just was so."
"Something in this sky, in this light, in this display of nature, had thus decided."
"They knew, they knew that they were right, that God, if He existed, was on their side."
"He swung round: ‘He might be following me to see where I live. Oh!’ thought he, ‘I wish he had done. I would give him such a thrashing in the open street!’"
"He flung a dark look at his portfolio; he disliked carrying it in his hand: it made him look like a lawyer."
"He did not blink the fact that he was running risks, but he was calm and cold, merely a little more animated than usual."
"I ought to find it intolerable, but I don't mind in the least."
"I can dance when I'm blind-tight. I can dance all night, it never tires me."
"Every movement of mine evoked, beyond itself, and in the future, something that insistently waited and matured."
"I have led a toothless life. I have never bitten into anything."
"I can't bear the idea that he should think me dead."
"If I died today, no one would ever know whether I was a wash-out, or whether I still had a chance of self-salvation."
"In my opinion, a man ought not to live beyond thirty, after that he's a back-number."
"I would sell myself to an old gentleman so as to be able to buy a lot of little things like that."
"I loathe being seen off, it always means a lot of feeble good-byes that stretch out like a length of india-rubber."
"You have only got to ask the waiter at the Oriental: he'll tell you."
"I don't see why you should assume that devastated look."
"I shan’t say anything to him, he’s like that, he can’t help telling lies."
"I can’t endure the idea of not seeing you again."
"What a torment it is not to be rich! It gets one into such abject situations."
"I'm not capable of learning a job, and I would sooner stay at Laon all my life, than begin the P. C. B. all over again."
"It doesn’t matter whether the money comes from here or elsewhere."
"He must decide. He has all night for doing so. Alone in confrontation with himself. All night."
"There is yet time; there will be plenty of time, I have all night."
"Nothing had been decided, nothing ever would be decided."
"He wishes he were dead, and he exists, he obstinately maintains his own existence."
"Homosexuals who boast of it or proclaim it, or merely acquiesce... are dead men."
"I don’t know what I would give to do something irrevocable."
"It’s true, it’s absolutely true: I have attained the age of reason."