Celine Journey To The End Of The Night Quotes

You can lose your way groping among the shadows of the past.

Philosophizing is simply one way of being afraid, a cowardly pretense that doesn't get you anywhere.

I crawled back into myself all alone, just delighted to observe that I was even more miserable than before, because I had brought a new kind of distress and something that resembled true feeling into my solitude.

A man should be resigned to knowing himself a little better each day if he hasn't got the guts to put an end to his sniveling once and for all.

When you stay too long in the same place, things and people go to pot on you, they rot and start stinking for your special benefit.

Poor people never, or hardly ever, ask for an explanation of all they have to put up with. They hate one another, and content themselves with that.

There's something sad about people going to bed. You can see they don't give a damn whether they're getting what they want out of life or not, you can see they don't even try to understand what we're here for. They just don't care.

You can lose your way groping among the shadows of the past. It's frightening how many people and things there are in a man's past that have stopped moving. The living people we've lost in the crypts of time sleep so soundly side by side with the dead that the same darkness envelops them all. As we grow older, we no longer know whom to awaken, the living or the dead.

The mind is satisfied with phrased, but not the body, the body is more fastidious, it wants muscles. A body always tells the truth, that's why it's usually depressing and disgusting to look at.

Why kid ourselves, people have nothing to say to one another, they all talk about their own troubles and nothing else. Each man for himself, the earth for us all. They try to unload their unhappiness on someone else when making love, they do their damnedest, but it doesn't work, they keep it all, and then they start all over again, trying to find a place for it. "Your pretty, Mademoiselle," they say. And life takes hold of them again until the next time, and then they try the same little gimmick. "You're very pretty, Mademoiselle..." And in between they boast that they've succeeded in getting rid of their unhappiness, but everyone knows it's not true and they've simply kept it all to themselves. Since at the little game you get uglier and more repulsive as you grow older, you can't hope to hide your unhappiness, your bankruptcy, any longer. In the end your features are marked with that hideous grimace that takes twenty, thrity years or more to climb form your belly to your face. That's all a man is good for, that and no more, a grimace that he takes a whole lifetime to compose. The grimace a man would need to express his true soul without losing any of it is so heavy and complicated that he doesn't always succeed in completing it.

She was having an attack of knuckleheaded anxiety. Those attacks last a long time.

Living, just by itself - what a dirge that is! Life is a classroom and Boredom's the usher, there all the time to spy on you; whatever happens, you've got to look as if you were awfully busy all the time doing something that's terribly exciting - or he'll come along and nibble your brain.

Study changes a man, puts pride into him. You need it to get to the bottom of life. Without it you just skim the surface. You think you're in the know, but trifles throw you off. You dream too much. You content yourself with words instead of going deeper. That's not what you wanted. Intentions, appearances, no more. A man of character can't content himself with that. Medicine, even if I wasn't very gifted, had brought me a good deal closer to people, to animals, everything. Now all I had to do was plunge straight into the heart of things. Death is chasing you, you've got to hurry, and while you're looking you've got to eat, and keep away from wars. That's a lot of things to do. It's no picnic.

Ce qui guide encore le mieux, c'est l'odeur de la merde.

Maybe we like to think different, but the world leaves us long before we leave it...for good.

If you've got to be unhappy, you may as well keep regular habits.

You need a heart and a certain amount of knowledge to go further than other people.

Korku insana evet de demez, hayır da. O, yani korku, her şeyi alır, her aklınızdan geçeni, her ağzınızdan çıkanı. Böyle durumlarda karanlıkta gözlerini fal taşı gibi açmak bile fayda etmez. Gerçi, zaten görüp göreceğiniz de dehşetten ibarettir ya, daha ötesi yok. Gece her şeyi ele geçirmiştir, hatta bakışları bile. İçinizi boşaltmıştır o. Yine de el ele tutuşmak gerek, yoksa düşersiniz. Gündüzün insanları artık sizi anlayamazlar. O korku tümüyle sizi onlardan ayırmıştır ve bunun yükü altında ezilirsiniz, ta ki her şey şu ya da bu biçimde bitinceye dek, işte ancak ondan sonra o genel geçer adilerin yanına geri dönme hakkınız doğar, yaşamda ya da ölümde..

Önlerine geceyi gündüzü ve yaşamı katmış gidiyordu insanlar. kendi gürültülerinden hicbir şey duymuyorlardı. sallamıyorlardı. üstelik kent ne kadar büyük ve ne kadar yüksekse o kadar çok pişkinliğe vuruyorlardı. diyorum size. denedim. değmez.

Öyle büsbütün korkağım, Lola, savaşı ve içinde ne varsa hepsini reddediyorum… Ben savaş var diye üzülmüyorum… Ben kaderime razı olmuyorum… Ben bu konuda sızlanıp durmuyorum… Onu olduğu gibi reddediyorum, içindeki insanlarla birlikte, onlarla, onunla hiçbir alışverişim olsun istemiyorum. İsterlerse dokuz yüz doksan beş milyon kişi olsunlar ve ben tek başıma kalayım, yine de haksız olan onlar, Lola, haklı olan da benim, çünkü ne istediğini bilen bir tek ben varım: ben artık ölmek istemiyorum.

With hardly a thought of what he was doing, he had consented to years of torture, to the crushing of his life in this torrid monotony for the sake of a little girl to whom he was vaguely related. Motivated by nothing but his good heart, he had set no conditions and asked nothing in return. To that little girl far away he was giving enough tenderness to make the whole world over, and he never showed it. Suddenly he fell asleep in the candlelight. After a while I got up to look at his face. He slept like everybody else. He looked quite ordinary. There ought to be some mark by which to distinguish good people from bad.