The Late Mattia Pascal Quotes
"Everyone who loves to read and spends time browsing in libraries and bookstores knows the excitement of coming across an unfamiliar book that seems full of promise."
"It is a story of a man who runs away from an unhappy marriage only to discover on his way home after an absence of two weeks that people there have mistaken a body found in the waters of a millrace for his body."
"Delighted by this stroke of luck, he sets out to construct a new identity for himself until the disguises and lies he is forced to employ entangle him into another absurd and miserable relationship."
"I have made a habit of laughing at all my misfortunes and torments," his hero says.
"For life, happily filled with shameless absurdities, has the rare privilege of being able to ignore credibility, whereas art feels called upon to pay attention to it."
"Our spirits have their own private way of understanding one another, of becoming intimate, while our external persons are still trapped in the commerce of ordinary words, in the slavery of social rules."
"One of the few things perhaps the only one that I know for certain is that my name is Mattia Pascal."
"For about two years I was rat hunter, or if you prefer, librarian, of the library that a certain Monsignor Boccamazza left to our city when he died in 1803."
"Our city authorities, on certain nights indicated by the calendar, don't have the street lamps lighted and often—if the night is cloudy—we are left in the dark."
"Therefore, because of this distraction furnished by Providence and, as I have said, because of the strangeness of my case, I will tell about myself, but as briefly as I can, giving only the information I consider necessary."
"We were both idle; we didn't want to bother our heads about anything, and as adults, we went on living the way our mother had accustomed us to live as children."
"I would shut my eyes slightly, shrug, and answer: 'My name is Mattia Pascal.'"
"I have become used to laughing at all my misfortunes and torments."
"The conscience isn't a self-sufficient absolute—do I make myself clear? When the sentiments, the tendencies, the tastes of these others, of whom I think and you think, are not reflected in me or in you, we can never be content or calm or happy."
"I'll live by myself and with myself, as I’ve lived until now!"
"I seemed no longer to be I, it was as if I weren’t touching myself."
"I'll try to pass most of my time with so-called inanimate things, seek out lovely views and charming, quiet spots."
"I could believe it, if at all, only when others believed it, too."
"But how different living, breathing reality seems from the inventions we draw from it!"
"I saw myself there, in the greenish water of the millrace, soaked, swollen, horrible, floating..."
"Every object is transformed within us according to the images it evokes, the sensations that cluster around it."
"I was free of everything. Wasn’t that enough for me?"
"I could have only casual acquaintances, I could allow myself only brief exchanges of alien words with my fellow men."
"When I was about to come to a decision, I felt myself restrained, I seemed to see all kinds of obstacles and shadows and hindrances."
"Life, observed in this way, as if by an outside spectator, seemed shapeless and aimless; I felt lost in the jostling crowds."
"Why does mankind toil so to make the apparatus of its living more and more complicated?"
"What will man do when machines do everything for him?"
"Even if we admire all the inventions that science sincerely believes will enrich our lives, what joy do they bring us, after all?"
"I began to converse with him, with the canary. I imitated his sounds with my lips, and he really thought someone was speaking to him."
"Doesn't something similar happen among us humans? Don't we also believe that nature speaks to us?"
"I had to overcome all my reluctance; I had to make up my mind at all costs. In short: I had to live, live, live!"
"But life, the electric light does very well; but, my dear sir, we also need that other light to illuminate our death for us."
"The healing of the planet? But it depends in what sense. The evil of science lies precisely there: it concerns itself only with life."
"I thought that my opinion might also be wrong, the fruit of the instinctive annoyance that anyone feels when he sees others ignoring him."
"The tragedy of Orestes in a marionette theatre! Automatic marionettes, the very latest invention."
"Every now and then when two people communicate only with their souls, if they are suddenly alone somewhere, they are full of anguish."
"The matter of the holy water stoup reminded me that since my boyhood days I hadn't observed any religious practices."
"Who knows how many people at Miragno were saying: 'He's lucky, after all! He's solved the problem at least.'"
"Many people still go to the churches to find the proper fuel for their little lanterns."
"They go forward in the darkness of our existence with their feelings glowing like votive lights."
"‘God sees me!' so as not to hear the din of life around them."
"What if death, in short, which frightens us so much, didn’t exist and were only the gust of air that blows out our lantern?"
"We have always lived and always will live with the universe."
"We share in all the manifestations of the universe, but we don’t know it."
"This miserable light shows us only the little zone that it can reach."
"We would laugh at all the vain, stupid afflictions our lantern has caused us."
"Perfect gentleman that he was, he never supposed that they might deceive him for some other end."
"The boundary is an illusion, relative only to our poor light, our individuality."
"Even now, in our present form, we share in all the manifestations of the universe."
"But how could I hear that voice, how could I listen to reason, when it spoke to me through Papiano's mouth?"
"The dead can no longer die. But I could: I am still alive for Death, and yet dead for Life."
"I felt my legs fail me as a dark emotion suddenly rose in me, making me shudder from head to foot."
"Was I to suffer this insult, as I had the robbery, without taking action?"
"I ran out, beside myself, flushed, as if they had whipped me."
"Little by little, the streets became deserted, so that I was left alone in the night."
"Life was being locked up, extinguished, falling silent with the night."
"Furious, I was also filled with leaden, grim anguish."
"A shudder of horror went through me, suddenly, furiously arousing all my vital energies."
"I stood there, as if dazzled by a strange, sudden light."
"A sudden joy, or, rather, madness seized me, uplifted me."
"I put on the providential traveling cap that had saved my life, and off I went."