“When we remember that we are all mad…” by Mark Twain
When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained. ☛ Mark Twain’s Notebook, Authorized Edition: The Complete Works of Mark Twain, edited by Albert Bigelow Paine, vol. XXII, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1935, p. 345. In the book, this quote appears under the chapter XXXI “Vienna”. Mark Twain [...]
Kafka’s Aphorisms: Believing in progress
Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made. That is not the sort of belief that indicates real faith. ☛ The Zürau Aphorisms of Franz Kafka by Franz Kafka, translated by Geoffrey Brocks and Michael Hofmann, New York: Schocken Books, §48 (Random House, Google books, Amazon). This aphorism was [...]
Blanchot on the analogy between writing and suicide
Writers fall into the same trap as do suicide victims except that instead of taking one death for another, “la mort contente” for “le mourir,” they mistake the book for the work, “le livre” for “l’oeuvre.” Both tend to a point by taking the initiative and exercising skill and know-how, but this point escapes any [...]
Milan Kundera on friendship and political convictions (Encounter, 2009)
In our time people have learned to subordinate friendship to what’s called “convictions.” And even with a prideful tone of moral correctness. It does take great maturity to understand that the opinion we are arguing for is merely the hypothesis we favor, necessarily imperfect, probably transitory, which only very limited minds can declare to be [...]
Living in vain: Maupassant (1888) and Céline (1932)
The doctor was on the point of turning into the second-class saloon, when he remembered that a large cargo of emigrants had come on board the night before, and he went down to the lower deck. He was met by a sickening smell of dirty, poverty-stricken humanity, an atmosphere of naked flesh (far more revolting [...]
