Rouge Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Rouge. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Our fingernails match our toenails, match our lipstick match our rouge...The habit of applying warpaint outlasts the battle.
Angela Carter (Wise Children)
Levana had not seen the bodies, but she had seen the bedrooms the next morning, and her first thought was that all that blood would make for a very pretty rouge on her lips.
Marissa Meyer (Fairest: Levana’s Story (The Lunar Chronicles, #3.5))
I do hope you’re using that thing to look at photographs of Moulin Rouge ladies as a young man your age should, and not hunting down another bothersome criminal.
Kady Cross (The Girl in the Steel Corset (Steampunk Chronicles, #1))
Sought we the Scrivani word-work of Surthur Long-lost in ledger all hope forgotten. Yet fast-found for friendship fair the book-bringer Hot comes the huntress Fela, flushed with finding Breathless her breast her high blood rising To ripen the red-cheek rouge-bloom of beauty. “That sort of thing,” Simmon said absently, his eyes still scanning the pages in front of him. I saw Fela turn her head to look at Simmon, almost as if she were surprised to see him sitting there. No, it was almost as if up until that point, he’d just been occupying space around her, like a piece of furniture. But this time when she looked at him, she took all of him in. His sandy hair, the line of his jaw, the span of his shoulders beneath his shirt. This time when she looked, she actually saw him. Let me say this. It was worth the whole awful, irritating time spent searching the Archives just to watch that moment happen. It was worth blood and the fear of death to see her fall in love with him. Just a little. Just the first faint breath of love, so light she probably didn’t notice it herself. It wasn’t dramatic, like some bolt of lightning with a crack of thunder following. It was more like when flint strikes steel and the spark fades almost too fast for you to see. But still, you know it’s there, down where you can’t see, kindling.
Patrick Rothfuss (The Wise Man’s Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2))
The only excursion of my life outside of New Orleans took me through the vortex to the whirlpool of despair: Baton Rouge. . . . New Orleans is, on the other hand, a comfortable metropolis which has a certain apathy and stagnation which I find inoffensive.
John Kennedy Toole (A Confederacy of Dunces)
These militiamen were what Jackson would call cou rouge. Because they were seriously red of the neck.
Kresley Cole (Poison Princess (The Arcana Chronicles, #1))
Why live life from dream to dream? And dread the day when dreaming ends.
Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge! (Newmarket Pictorial Moviebooks))
She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman.
Oscar Wilde
The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge! (Newmarket Pictorial Moviebooks))
Cleverness is like rouge - liberal application makes a woman look common and desperate. Wit is knowing how to apply it.
Tessa Dare (Any Duchess Will Do (Spindle Cove, #4))
The greatest thing you'll ever learn is to love and be loved in return
Moulin Rouge
Because what is the face, what finally, is the skin over the flesh, a cover, a disguise, rouge for the insupportable horror of our living nature.
Elena Ferrante (The Days of Abandonment)
Sought we the Scrivani word-work of Surthur Long-long in ledger all hope forgotten Yet fast-found for friendship fair the book-bringer Hot comes the huntress Fela, flushed with finding Breathless her breast her high blood rising To ripen the red-cheek rouge-bloom of beauty.
Patrick Rothfuss (The Wise Man’s Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2))
Long time I been on my own, but now really I'm alone. I survive the killing, the starving, all the hate of the Khmer Rouge, but I think maybe now I will die of this, of broken heart.
Patricia McCormick (Never Fall Down)
Once upon a time, [...]. There was a world that was perfectly made and full of birds and striped creatures and lovely things like honey lilies and star tenzing and weasels— [...] And this world already had light and shadow, so it didn't need any rouge stars to come and save it, and it had no use for bleeding suns or weeping moons, either, and most important, it had never known war, which is a terrible and wasteful thing that no world needs. It had earth and water, air and fire, all four elements, but it was missing the last element. Love. [...] And so this paradise was like a jewel box without a jewel. There it lay, day after day of rose-colored dawns and creature sounds and strange perfumes, and waited for lovers to find it and fill it with their happiness. The end. [...] The story is unfinished. The world is still waiting.
Laini Taylor (Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #1))
Nature Boy There was a boy A very strange enchanted boy They say he wandered very far, very far Over land and sea A little shy And sad of eye But very wise Was he And then one day A magic day he passed my way And while we spoke of many things, fools and kings This he said to me “The greatest thing You’ll ever learn Is just to love And be loved In return
Nat King Cole
Well, she wore far too much rouge last night, and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of desperation in a woman.
Oscar Wilde (An Ideal Husband)
The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
rosto cupped laddybuck in one hand and grabed the back of my neck with the other pulling me in and kissing me right on the mouth. i should have punched him but his lips were soft and sweet. i will punch him next time. -beka after she realizes that rosto the piper is the new rouge
Tamora Pierce (Terrier (Beka Cooper, #1))
You were such a lonely little girl, weren't you? Whispering to grass. Befriending sticks. Dreaming yourself into movies and books. Every screen, every page, like a door to another world, remember?
Mona Awad (Rouge)
If you don't believe it, go down to your local karaoke bar on a busy night. Wait until the third hour, when the drunk frat boys and gastropub waitresses with headshots are all done with Backstreet Boys and Alicia Keys and locate the slightly older Asian businessman standing patiently in line for his turn, his face warmly rouged on Crown or Japanese lager, and when he steps up and starts slaying "Country Roads," try not to laugh, or wink knowingly or clap a little too hard, because by the time he gets to "West Virginia, mountain mama," you're going to be singing along, and by the time he's done, you might understand why a seventy-seven-year-old guy from a tiny island in the Taiwan Strait who's been in a foreign country for two-thirds of his life can nail a song, note perfect, about wanting to go home.
Charles Yu (Interior Chinatown)
Theology sits rouged at the window and courts philosophy's favor, offering to sell her charms to it.
Søren Kierkegaard (Fear and Trembling)
7. But what kind of love is it, really? Don’t fool yourself and call it sublimity. Admit that you have stood in front of a little pile of powdered ultramarine pigment in a glass cup at a museum and felt a stinging desire. But to do what? Liberate it? Purchase it? Ingest it? . . . You might want to reach out and disturb the pile of pigment, for example, first staining your fingers with it, then staining the world. You might want to dilute it and swim in it, you might want to rouge your nipples with it, you might want to paint a virgin’s robe with it. But still you wouldn’t be accessing the blue of it. Not exactly.
Maggie Nelson (Bluets)
[on Rouge] This is a film about communication that disappears. We have better and better tools and less and less communication with each other. We only exchange information.
Krzysztof Kieślowski
Didn't you envy? Didn't you want? A mirror is only a mirror, Belle. It only ever reflects back what we desire and long for
Mona Awad (Rouge)
Here is everything I know about France: Madeline and Amelie and Moulin Rouge. The Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, although I have no idea what the function of either actually is. Napoleon, Marie Antoinette, and a lot of kings named Louis. I'm not sure what they did either, but I think it has something to do with the French Revolution, which has something to do with Bastille Day. The art museum is called the Louvre and it's shaped like a pyramid and the Mona Lisa lives there along with that statue of the women missing her arms. And there are cafes and bistros or whatever they call them on every street corner. And mimes. The food is supposed to be good, and the people drink a lot of wine and smoke a lot of cigarettes. I've heard they don't like Americans, and they don't like white sneakers.
Stephanie Perkins (Anna and the French Kiss (Anna and the French Kiss, #1))
Je ne suis pas plus moderne qu'ancien, pas plus Français que Chinois, et l'idée de la patrie c'est-à-dire l'obligation où l'on est de vivre sur un coin de terre marqué en rouge ou en bleu sur la carte et de détester les autres coins en vert ou en noir m'a paru toujours étroite, bornée et d'une stupidité féroce.
Gustave Flaubert (Correspondance)
The only journey that matters in the end, Daughter of Noelle.” “Retinol?” I whisper. “The soul. A journey of the soul, of course.
Mona Awad (Rouge)
Donc, il faudra que je meure et flotte comme écume sur la mer et n'entende jamais plus la musique des vagues, ne voit plus les fleurs ravissantes et le rouge soleil. Ne puis-je rien faire pour gagner une vie éternelle?
Hans Christian Andersen
Then she did see it there - just a face, peering through the curtains, hanging in midair like a mask. A head-scarf concealed the hair and the glassy eyes stared inhumanly, but it wasn’t a mask, it couldn’t be. The skin had been powdered dead-white and two hectic spots of rouge centered on the cheekbones. It wasn’t a mask. It was the face of a crazy old woman. Mary started to scream, and then the curtains parted further and a hand appeared, holding a butcher’s knife. It was the knife that, a moment later, cut off her scream. And her head.
Robert Bloch (Psycho (Psycho, #1))
If she did ask, I would say it was grief. The deepest grief. I know she would accept that as an answer. No one knows what’s inside grief. Anything at all can be there.
Mona Awad (Rouge)
A girl of sixteen had a complexion like a rose, and she put on rouge.
Stendhal (The Red and the Black)
Without the sun, what’s the moon? Just a rock in the outer dark. Its illumination just a trick. Just a trick from the sun’s light, which it steals. And that’s what Beauty is too.
Mona Awad (Rouge)
The finest line of poetry ever uttered in the history of this whole damn country was said by Canada Bill Jones in 1853, in Baton Rouge, while he was being robbed blind in a crooked game of faro. George Devol, who was, like Canada Bill, not a man who was averse to fleecing the odd sucker, drew Bill aside and asked him if he couldn't see that the game was crooked. And Canada Bill sighed, and shrugged his shoulders, and said, 'I know. But it's the only game in town.' And he went back to the game.
Neil Gaiman (American Gods)
As well, they used their B-52 bombers to drop thousands of tons of bombs which included napalm and cluster bombs. In a particularly vile attack, they used poisonous chemicals on our base regions of Xuyen Moc, the Minh Dam and the Nui Thi Vai mountains. They sprayed their defoliants over jungle, and productive farmland alike. They even bull-dozed bare, both sides along the communication routes and more than a kilometre into the jungle adjacent to our base areas. This caused the Ba Ria-Long Khanh Province Unit to send out a directive to D445 and D440 Battalions that as of 01/November/1969, the rations of both battalions would be set at 27 litres of rice per man per month when on operations. And 25 litres when in base or training. So it was that as the American forces withdrew, their arms and lavish base facilities were transferred across to the RVN. The the forces of the South Vietnamese Government were with thereby more resources but this also created any severe maintenance, logistic and training problems. The Australian Army felt that a complete Australian withdrawal was desirable with the departure of the Task Force (1ATF), but the conservative government of Australia thought that there were political advantages in keeping a small force in south Vietnam. Before his election, in 1964, Johnston used a line which promised peace, but also had a policy of war. The very same tactic was used by Nixon. Nixon had as early as 1950 called for direction intervention by American Forces which were to be on the side of the French colonialists. The defoliants were sprayed upon several millions of hectares, and it can best be described as virtual biocide. According to the figure from the Americans themselves, between the years of 1965 to 1973, ten million Vietnamese people were forced to leave their villages ad move to cities because of what the Americans and their allies had done. The Americans intensified the bombing of whole regions of Laos which were controlled by Lao patriotic forces. They used up to six hundred sorties per day with many types of aircraft including B52s. On 07/January/1979, the Vietnamese Army using Russian built T-54 and T-59 tanks, assisted by some Cambodian patriots liberated Phnom Penh while the Pol Pot Government and its agencies fled into the jungle. A new government under Hun Sen was installed and the Khmer Rouge’s navy was sunk nine days later in a battle with the Vietnamese Navy which resulted in twenty-two Kampuchean ships being sunk.
Michael G. Kramer (A Gracious Enemy)
Do you think I am a fool, Masha? All this time, and you speak to me as though I were a flighty pinprick of a girl. I am a magician! Did you never think, even once, that I loved lipstick and rouge for more than their color alone? I am a student of their lore, and it is arcane and hermetic beyond the dreams of alchemists. Did you never wonder why I gave you so many pots, so many creams, so much perfume?
Catherynne M. Valente (Deathless)
I left the bed as she had left it, unmade and rumpled, coverlets awry, so that her body's print might rest still warm beside my own. Until the next day I did not go to bathe, I wore no clothes and did not dress my hair, for fear I might erase some sweet caress. That morning I did not eat, nor yet at dusk, and put no rouge nor powder on my lips, so that her kiss might cling a little longer. I left the shutters closed, and did not open the door, for fear the memory of the night before might vanish with the wind.
Pierre Louÿs (The Songs of Bilitis)
C'est la violente impression du laid sur une âme faite pour aimer ce qui est beau.
Stendhal (Le Rouge et le Noir)
Es preferible sentirse decepcionado que seguir esperando el vacío.
Boris Vian (L'Herbe rouge)
La besaron tanto entre Inés y su madre que le quedó la cara como caminada, blanda y oliendo a rouge y polvo rachel de Coty, húmeda alrededor de la boca, un asco que el viento le sacó de un manotazo.
Julio Cortázar (Bestiario)
Confidence did more to enhance a woman’s beauty than any kohl or rouge could manage.
Tessa Dare (When a Scot Ties the Knot (Castles Ever After, #3))
What I smell is the word forbidden, red and sharp and bittersweet, rising up like crushed roses under the bed.
Mona Awad (Rouge)
Death,” she says, “is just another door, Daughter, we must remember. Your mother,” she sighs, “was making such progress. A shame to lose her. But she did go the way of roses.” She smiles sadly. “Surely that’s a consolation.
Mona Awad (Rouge)
My gift is my song
Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge! (Newmarket Pictorial Moviebooks))
That’s my one desire, to be caught," answered Vronsky, with his serene, good-humored smile. "If I complain of anything it’s only that I’m not caught enough, to tell the truth. I begin to lose hope.
Leo Tolstoy
One senses that Hegel was possible only in German, and finds it natural that Locke in a language where large and red precede apple should have arrived at the thing after sorting out its sensory qualities, whereas Descartes in a language where grosse et rouge follows pomme should have come to the attributes after the distinct idea.
Hugh Kenner
I prefer to regard a dessert as I would imagine the perfect woman: subtle, a little bittersweet, not blowsy and extrovert. Delicately made up, not highly rouged. Holding back, not exposing everything and, of course, with a flavor that lasts.
Graham Kerr
Starting with a party scene for 600 cast and end up singing on top of a giant elephant...does it get any better than this?
Ewan McGregor
To keep you is no benefit, to destroy you is no loss.
Khmer Rouge
If I had beauty, I decided then, I would never throw it away. I would never give it up.
Mona Awad (Rouge)
Por la ventana se veían los largos regueros de lágrimas del crepúsculo en las negras mejillas de las nubes.
Boris Vian (L'herbe rouge - roman / Les lurettes fourrées - nouvelles)
It's just because I love the past that I want this house to look back on its glamourous moment of youth and beauty, and I want its stairs to creak as if to the footsteps of women with hoop skirts and men in boots and spurs. But they've made it into a blondined, rouged-up old woman of sixty.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Beautiful and Damned)
As a Nobel Peace laureate, I, like most people, agonize over the use of force. But when it comes to rescuing an innocent people from tyranny or genocide, I've never questioned the justification for resorting to force. That's why I supported Vietnam's 1978 invasion of Cambodia, which ended Pol Pot's regime, and Tanzania's invasion of Uganda in 1979, to oust Idi Amin. In both cases, those countries acted without U.N. or international approval—and in both cases they were right to do so.
José Ramos-Horta (A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for War in Iraq)
Quedarías tú, pero no se puede estar dentro de la piel de otro. Seríamos dos. Y tú eres completa. Tú entera ya eres demasiado; y como todo merece ser conservado, más vale que seas distinta a mí.
Boris Vian (L'herbe rouge - roman / Les lurettes fourrées - nouvelles)
Julien cherchait a ne pas s'exagerer cette cinguliere amitie. Il la comparait lui-meme a un commerce arme. Chaque jour en se retrouvant, avant de reprendre le tonpreque intime de la veille, on se demandait presque: Serons-nous aujourd'hui amis ou ennemis?
Stendhal (Le Rouge Et Le Noir, Stendhal)
America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception. Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight. The real Trinity of Camelot was Look Good, Kick Ass, Get Laid. Jack Kennedy was the mythological front man for a particularly juicy slice of our history. He called a slick line and wore a world-class haircut. He was Bill Clinton minus pervasive media scrutiny and a few rolls of flab. Jack got whacked at the optimum moment to assure his sainthood. Lies continue to swirl around his eternal flame. It's time to dislodge his urn and cast light on a few men who attended his ascent and facilitated his fall. They were rouge cops and shakedown artist. They were wiretappers and soldiers of fortune and faggot lounge entertainers. Had one second of their lives deviated off course, American History would not exist as we know it. It's time to demythologize an era and build a new myth from the gutter to the stars. It's time to embrace bad men and the price they paid to secretly define there time. Here's to them.
James Ellroy (American Tabloid (Underworld USA #1))
Les roses de Saadi J'ai voulu ce matin te rapporter des roses ; Mais j'en avais tant pris dans mes ceintures closes Que les noeuds trop serrés n'ont pu les contenir. Les noeuds ont éclaté. Les roses envolées Dans le vent, à la mer s'en sont toutes allées. Elles ont suivi l'eau pour ne plus revenir ; La vague en a paru rouge et comme enflammée. Ce soir, ma robe encore en est tout embaumée... Respires-en sur moi l'odorant souvenir.
Marceline Desbordes-Valmore
She used to tell you fairy tales at night, remember? Once upon a time. When you were a sad, dreamy little girl. Each night you lay in your princess bed, surrounded by your glassy-eyed dolls, waiting for her like a wish
Mona Awad (Rouge)
През прозореца се виждаха дългите следи от сълзите на здрача по черните бузи на облаците.
Boris Vian (L'herbe rouge - roman / Les lurettes fourrées - nouvelles)
You’ll wear loads of face powder and rouge.” “They’ll itch.” She knew from experimenting with Cousin Augusta’s. “And you must use a false name.” “I’ll forget it. I know it.” He sighed. “You can’t afford to forget it.” “Then it must be Delilah,” she said. “It’s the only name I’ll be able to remember.” “Why Delilah?” “I don’t know. But I already know I won’t forget it.
Kieran Kramer (When Harry Met Molly (Impossible Bachelors, #1))
It's the hour when all the shop mannequins conspire to look menacing. When they all appear to be smirking a little. The mannequins always reminded me of mother. Flawless, white, smiling.
Mona Awad (Rouge)
Shut up," hissed the Marquess. "I chose it, you miserable, rouged-up idiots! Why shouldn't I have a boy's title? People listen to boys! They fear boys—they fear a King and hope a Queen will show them mercy! Why shouldn't I be a Marquess? I rule the world! I say how things are pronounced! I say what belongs to boys and what doesn't!
Catherynne M. Valente (The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home (Fairyland, #5))
Le malheur avait mis les habits du mensonge Ils étaient d’un beau rouge couleur du sang du cœur Mais son cœur à lui était gris Penché sur la margelle il me chantait l’amour Sa voix grinçait comme la poulie Et moi dans mon costume de vérité je me taisais et je riais et je dansais au fond du puits Et sur l’eau qui riait aussi la lune brillait contre le malheur la lune se moquait de lui.
Jacques Prévert
Thank god, I tell myself. Which god, I don't know. Between Mother's and Father's gods, I picture a wide black space full of stars. That's the space I whisper up to. Maybe there's a god there too. My own
Mona Awad (Rouge)
There was a space there, too, like the one between me and Mother. Like the one between me and everyone forever after. There has been a space between me and everything ever since you turned to smoke. There has been a wall of glass.
Mona Awad (Rouge)
The cost of war is a lifelong legacy borne by children.
Chanrithy Him (When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge)
C’est que l’on a souvent pour ennemis des gens qu’on voudrait avoir pour amis.
Alexandre Dumas (The Knight of Maison-Rouge)
There was never anything to fear. Which is a little disappointing, frankly. Maybe I wanted to be obliterated.
Mona Awad (Rouge)
He saw her as the passionate spirit of innocent youth, now beleaguered by the trick which is played on youth - the trick of treachery in the body, which turns flesh into green bones. Her stupid finery was not vulgar to him, but touching. The girl was still there, still appealing from behind the breaking barricade of rouge. She had made the brave protest: I will not be vanquished. Under the clumsy coquetry, the undignified clothes, there was the human cry for help. The young eyes were puzzled, saying: It is I, inside here - what have they done to me? I will not submit. Some part of her spirit knew that the powder was making a guy of her, and hated it, and tried to hold her lover with the eyes alone. They said: Don't look at all this. Look at me. I am still here, in the eyes. Look at me, here in the prison, and help me out. Another part said: I am not old, it is illusion. I am beautifully made-up. See, I will perform the movements of youth. I will defy the enormous army of age.
T.H. White (The Once and Future King)
he began to feel that she was very lonely indeed. “If he’d been here,” she said, “those cowards would never have dared to insult me.” She thought about “him” with great sadness and perhaps longing--about his honest, stupid, constant kindness and fidelity; his never-ceasing obedience; his good humour; his bravery and courage. Very likely she cried, for she was particularly lively, and had put on a little extra rouge, when she came down to dinner.
William Makepeace Thackeray (Vanity Fair)
The greatest thing you will ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
Moulin Rouge
Jamais la mode et le beau n'ont été si loin l'un de l'autre.
Stendhal (Le rouge et le noir)
When you lose everything, you have nothing left to live for," said Hunter. "If you have nothing left to live for, why are you still fighting?
Isabella Modra (Embers & Ice (Rouge, #2))
Masks! I see them everywhere. That dreadful vision of the other night - the deserted town with its masked corpses in every doorway; that nightmare product of morphine and ether - has taken up residence within me. I see masks in the street, I see them on stage in the theatre, I find yet more of them in the boxes. They are on the balcony and in the orchestra-pit. Everywhere I go I am surrounded by masks. The attendants to whom I give my overcoat are masked; masks crowd around me in the foyer as everyone leaves, and the coachman who drives me home has the same cardboard grimace fixed upon his face! It is truly too much to bear: to feel that one is alone and at the mercy of all those enigmatic and deceptive faces, alone amid all the mocking laughs and the threats embodied in those masks. I have tried to persuade myself that I am dreaming, and that I am the victim of a hallucination, but all the powdered and painted faces of women, all the rouged lips and kohl-blackened eyelids... all of that has created around me an atmosphere of trance and mortal agony. Cosmetics: there is the root cause of my illness! But I am happy, now, when there are only masks! Sometimes, I detect the cadavers beneath, and remember that beneath the masks there is a host of spectres.
Jean Lorrain (Monsieur De Phocas)
¿Dónde estaban los recuerdos puros? En casi todos se funden impresiones de otras épocas que se les superponen y les confieren una realidad distinta. Los recuerdos no existen: es otra vida revivida con otra personalidad, y que en parte es consecuencia de esos mismos recuerdos. No se puede invertir el sentido del tiempo, a menos que se viva con los ojos cerrados y los oídos sordos.
Boris Vian (L'herbe rouge - roman / Les lurettes fourrées - nouvelles)
Hembry," he said, not lifting his gaze from Juliana's. "We will retire to the music room. Lady Juliana wishes to play with me." She laughed at his outrageous statement as the butler disappeared to light the lamps in the music room. "Play for you, you rouge. Music. Nothing else." "Hmmm...," he enigmatically replied. Sinclair allowed her to put her own interpretation on his intentions as they entered the house.
Alexandra Hawkins (All Night with a Rogue (Lords of Vice, #1))
If a picture is worth a thousand words, why did God invent captions?
David Mellonie (Land Mines and Ladyboys: Flirting with Danger in Thailand and Cambodia)
Mieux vaudrait apprendre à faire l'amour correctement que de s'abrutir sur un livre d'histoire.
Boris Vian (L'Herbe rouge)
la finesse du paysan l'emporta sur la finesse de l'homme riche, qui n'en a pas besoin pour vivre (partie 1, ch. 5)
Stendhal (Le Rouge Et Le Noir)
There is a story about the life of Buddha in which a mother carries her dead son to him draped in her arms. The woman has heard that he is a holy man who can restore life. Weeping, she appeals for mercy. Gently, Buddha tells her that he can help save her son’s life, but that first she has to bring him a mustard seed secured from a family that has never experienced death. Desperately she searches home after home. Many want to help, but everyone has already experienced a loss--a sister, a husband, a child. Finally the woman returns to Buddha. “What have you found?” he asks. “Where is your mustard seed and where is your son? You are not carrying him.” “I buried him,” she replies
Chanrithy Him (When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge)
Je ne vois que las condamnation a mort qui distingue un homme, pensa Mathilde, c'est la seule chose qui ne s'achete pas. Ah! c'est un bon mot que je viens de me dire! quel dommage qu'il ne soit pas venu de facon a m'en faire honneur. Mathilde avait trop de gout pour amener dans la conversation un bon mot fait d'avance, mais elle avait aussie trop de vanite pour ne pas etre enchantee d'elle-meme.
Stendhal (Le Rouge Et Le Noir, Stendhal)
A life of hardship and personal suffering is unavoidable. A person must endure many humiliations of the mind and body, and expect persons whom they trusted to someday betray them. People inevitably witness the death of their loved ones. We also witness acts of depravity committed by criminals that lurk in every society and rouge acts of scandal committed by government officials in charge of the public welfare. A person must nonetheless resist personal discouragement, sadness, dejection, and despondency. I must reach an accord with pain, suffering, and anguish, or forevermore be tortured by reality while constantly seeking to escape from the inescapable agony of being.
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
Manifest Destiny anticipated nearly all the ideological and programmatic elements of Hitler's Lebensraum policy. In fact, Hitler modeled his conquest of the East on the American conquest of the West.* During the first half of this century, a majority of American states enacted sterilization laws and tens of thousands of Americans were involuntarily sterilized. The Nazis explicitly invoked this US precedent when they enacted their own sterilization laws.'' The notorious 1935 Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of the franchise and forbade miscegenation between Jews and non-Jews. Blacks in the American South suffered the same legal disabilities and were the object of much greater spontaneous and sanctioned popular violence than the Jews in prewar Germany. To highlight unfolding crimes abroad, the US often summons memories of The Holocaust. The more revealing point, however, is when the US invokes The Holocaust. Crimes of official enemies such as the Khmer Rouge bloodbath in Cambodia, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and Serbian ethnic cleansing in Kosovo recall The Holocaust; crimes in which the US is complicit do not.
Norman G. Finkelstein (The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering)
One in eight Cambodians – as many as 2 million people – were killed during the Khmer Rouge’s campaign to eradicate their country’s history. One out of every 250 Cambodians is missing a limb, crippled by one of the thousands and thousands of land mines still waiting to be stepped on in the country’s roads, fields, forests, and irrigation ditches. Destabilized, bombed, invaded, forced into slave labor, murdered by the thousands, the Cambodians must have been relieved when the Vietnamese, Cambodia’s historical archenemy, invaded.
Anthony Bourdain (A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines)
The 20th century merits the name "The Century of Murder." 1915 Turks slaughtered 2 million Armenians. 1933 to 1954 the Soviet government encompassed the death of 20 to 65 million citizens. 1933 to 1945 Nazi Germany murdered more than 25 million people. 1948 Hindus and Muslims engaged in racial and religious strife that claimed more lives than could be reported. 1970 3 million Bangladesh were killed. 1971 Uganda managed the death of 300,000 people. 1975 Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia and murdered up to 3 million people. In recent times more than half a million of Rwanda's 6 million people have been murdered. At present times genocidal strife is underway in Bosnia, Somalia, Burundi and elsewhere. The people of the world have demonstrated themselves to be so capable of forgetting the murderous frenzies in which their fellows have participated that it is essential that one, at least, be remembered and the world be regularly reminded of it. _Consequences of the Holocaust
Raul Hilberg
- Dejame seguir, che. Yo te diría que eso que vos definís como manía o entusiasmo es algo particularmente masculino, sobre todo a partir de la edad adulta, porque es archisabido que en los hombres el niño se conserva mejor que en las mujeres. - Como quieras, en todo caso yo buscaré siempre esas mujeres que se inventan cada cinco minutos el aeroplano o el submarino, figuramente hablando, que no pueden ver un par de tijeras y una hoja de papel sin recortar un conejito, que cocinan echando miel en vez de aceite en la sartén para ver qué pasa con las costillas de cerdo, y que en cualquier momento se ponen el rimmel en la boca y el rouge en las cejas. - Mutatis mutandis, vos querés que sean como vos, rimmel aparte. - No que sean como yo, pero que me hagan sentirme yo mismo a cada minuto. - Las musas, en una palabra. - No es por eqoísmo ni porque ande necesitando palancas para mover el mundo. Solamente que vivir con una mujer pasiva me aplasta poco a poco, me quita las ganas de cambiarle la yerba al mate, de cantar a gritos mientras me baño; hay como una especie de sorda llamada al orden, de cada cosa en su lugar, el canario está triste, la leche no se va al fuego, es siniestro.
Julio Cortázar (Libro de Manuel)
Do you think I am a foo, Masha? All this time, and you speak to me as though I were a flighty pinprick of a girl. I am a magician! Did you ever think, even once, that I loved lipstick and rouge for more than their color alone? I am a student of their lore, and it is arcane and hermetic beyond the dreams of alchemists. Did you ever wonder why I gave you so many pots, so many creams, so much perfume? ... Cosmetics are an extension of the will. Why do you think all men paint themselves when they go to fight? When I paint my eyes to match my soup, it is not because I have nothing better to do than worry over trifles. It says, I belong here, and you will not deny me. When I streak my lips red as foxgloves, I say, Come here, male. I am your mate, and you will not deny me. When I pinch my cheeks and dust them with mother-of-pearl, I say, Death, keep off, I am your enemy and you will not deny me. I say these things, and the world listens, Masha. Because my magic is as strong as an arm. I am never denied.
Catherynne M. Valente (Deathless)
Le petit prince était maintenant tout pâle de colère. «Il y a des millions d'années que les fleurs fabriquent des épines. Il y a des millions d'années que les moutons mangent quand même les fleurs. Et ce n'est pas sérieux de chercher à comprendre pourquoi elles se donnent tant de mal pour se fabriquer des épines qui ne servent jamais à rien? Ce n'est pas important la guerre des moutons et des fleurs? Ce n'est pas sérieux et plus important que les additions d'un gros Monsieur rouge? Et si je connais, moi, une fleur unique au monde, qui n'existe nulle part, sauf dans ma planète, et qu'un petit mouton peut anéantir d'un seul coup, comme ça, un matin, sans se rendre compte de ce qu'il fait, ce n'est pas important ça?» Il rougit, puis reprit: «Si quelqu'un aime une fleur qui n'existe qu'à un exemplaire dans les millions d'étoiles, ça suffit pour qu'il soit heureux quand il les regarde. Il se dit: "Ma fleur est là quelque part..." Mais si le mouton mange la fleur, c'est pour lui comme si, brusquement, toutes les étoiles s'éteignaient! Et ce n'est pas important ça!»
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (The Little Prince)
J’écris donc d’ici, de chez les invendues, les tordues, celles qui ont le crâne rasée, celles qui ne savent pas s’habiller, celles qui ont peur de puer, celles qui ont les chicots pourris, celles qui ne savent pas s’y prendre, celles à qui les hommes ne font pas de cadeau, celles qui baiseraient n’importe qui voulant bien d’elles, les grosses putes, les petites salopes, les femmes à chatte toujours sèche, celles qui ont un gros bides, celles qui voudraient être des hommes, celles qui se prennent pour des hommes, celles qui rêvent de faire hardeuses, celles qui n’en ont rien à foutre des mecs mais que leurs copines intéressent, celles qui ont un gros cul, celles qui ont les poils drus et bien noirs et qui ne vont pas se faire épiler, les femmes brutales, bruyantes, celles qui cassent tout sur leur passage, celles qui n’aiment pas les parfumeries, celles qui se mettent du rouge trop rouge, celles qui sont trop mal foutues pour pouvoir se saper comme des chaudasses mais qui en crèvent d’envie, celles qui veulent porter des fringues d’hommes et la barbe dans la rue, celles qui veulent tout montrer, celles qui sont pudiques par complexe, celles qui ne savent pas dire non, celles qu’on enferme pour les mater, celles qui font peur, celles qui font pitié, celles qui ne font pas envie, celles qui ont la peau flasque, des rides plein la face, celles qui rêvent de se faire lifter, liposucer, péter le nez pour le refaire mais qui n’ont pas l’argent pour le faire, celles qui ne ressemblent à rien, celles qui ne comptent que sur elles-mêmes pour se protéger, celles qui ne savent pas être rassurantes, celles qui s’en foutent de leurs enfants, celles qui aiment boire jusqu’à se vautrer par terre dans les bars, celles qui ne savent pas se tenir.
Virginie Despentes (King Kong théorie)
BOOK BEAUTY Here's the end of that story about the old woman who wanted to lure a man with strange cosmetics. She made a paste of pages from the Qur'an to fill the deep creases on her face and neck with. This is not about an old woman, dear reader. It's about you, or anyone who tries to use books to make themselves attractive. There she is, sticking scripture, thick with saliva, on her face. Of course, the bits keep falling off. "The devil," she yells, and he appears! "This is a trick I've never seen. You don't need me. You are yourself a troop of demons!" So people steal inspired words to get compliments. Don't bother. Death comes and all talking, stolen or not, stops. Pity anyone unfamiliar with silence when that happens. Polish your heart with mediation and quietness. Let the inner life grow generous and handsome like Joseph. Zuleika did that and her "old woman's spring cold snap" turned to mid-July. Dry lips wet from within. Ink is not rouge. Let language lie bygone. Now is where love breathes.
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi (The Soul of Rumi: A New Collection of Ecstatic Poems)
The most difficult stories about the Khmer Rouge are the ones over which hover almost and maybe. She almost made it, but dysentery took her at the end. He is maybe buried in the mass grave at Choeung Ek, so we will pay our respects there. He almost walked all the way to Thailand, but the cadres found him in the forest. She maybe saw her infant son one last time before she was taken. Anne Spencer almost made it off those wards. After I read the email, an ancient and exuberant terror blazed through me. It was partly the terror that had grown in me alongside my very bones, knowing as I did that I only existed because my mother had outrun almost; I don’t know at what point you stop feeling the need to run, generation by generation, when you’re born after that. But it was also a wonderful, simple, human terror. The one where death brushes too close to you and you abruptly remember what an insane gift it is to be alive, and how much you’d like to stay alive even when death is laughing at your window, laughing in your mirror.
Kaliane Bradley (The Ministry of Time)
onaltı dümen ve sürekli erdemlilik yılı. onaltı sıkıntılı yıl geride ne kaldı? yalıtılmış, ufak görüntüler. yeni kitapların kokuları, bir ekim resmini yaptığımız yapraklar, uygulamalı çalışmalarda kesilmiş kurbağanın formol kokulu iğrenç karnı, tatile çıkacakları için öğretmenlerin de insan olduklarının fark edildiği ve sınıfın daha tenha olduğu senenin son günleri. artık sebebini bilmediğimiz tüm o büyük korkular, sınav akşamları. düzenli bir alışkanlık. bununla sınırlıydı. artık biliyor musunuz bay brul, çocuklara onaltı yıl süren düzenli bir alışkanlığı dayatmak alçaklık? zaman bozuldu, bay brul. gerçek zaman, eşit saatlere bölünmüş ve mekanik değildir. gerçek zaman özneldir. içinde taşırsın. her sabah saat yedide kalkın. öğlen yemek yeyip, dokuzda yatın. asla kendinize ait bir geceniz olmaz. denizin alçalmayı bırakıp durduğu bir an, tekrar yükselmeden önce gecenin ve gündüzün birbirine karışıp eridiği ve nehirlerin okyanusla karşılaşmalarındakine benzeyen bir coşku seti oluşturduğu, dingin bir zamanın varolduğunu asla bilemezsiniz. onaltı yıl gecelerimi çaldılar, bay brul. beşinci sınıfta, altıncı sınıfa geçmemin tek ilerleyişim olması gerektiğine inandırdılar beni. son sınıfta bitirme sınavını vermem gerekiyordu. ardından bir diploma. evet bir amacım olduğunu sanıyordum bay brul. ama hiçbir şeyim yoktu. başlangıcı ve sonu olmayan koridorda, bir embesiller römorkunda, diğer embesilleri izleyerek ilerliyordum. hayatımızı diplomalarla geçiştiriyoruz. aynı zorlanmadan yutturmak için kapsüllerin içine acı tozlar konması gibi. görüyor musunuz bay brul, hayatın gerçek tadını sevebilirmişim bunu şimdi anlıyorum.
Boris Vian (L'herbe rouge - roman / Les lurettes fourrées - nouvelles)
New Rule: You don't have to teach both sides of a debate if one side is a load of crap. President Bush recently suggested that public schools should teach "intelligent design" alongside the theory of evolution, because after all, evolution is "just a theory." Then the president renewed his vow to "drive the terrorists straight over the edge of the earth." Here's what I don't get: President Bush is a brilliant scientist. He's the man who proved you could mix two parts booze with one part cocaine and still fly a jet fighter. And yet he just can't seem to accept that we descended from apes. It seems pathetic to be so insecure about your biological superiority to a group of feces-flinging, rouge-buttocked monkeys that you have to make up fairy tales like "We came from Adam and Eve," and then cover stories for Adam and Eve, like intelligent design! Yeah, leaving the earth in the hands of two naked teenagers, that's a real intelligent design. I'm sorry, folks, but it may very well be that life is just a series of random events, and that there is no master plan--but enough about Iraq. There aren't necessarily two sides to every issue. If there were, the Republicans would have an opposition party. And an opposition party would point out that even though there's a debate in schools and government about this, there is no debate among scientists. Evolution is supported by the entire scientific community. Intelligent design is supported by the guys on line to see The Dukes of Hazzard. And the reason there is no real debate is that intelligent design isn't real science. It's the equivalent of saying that the Thermos keeps hot things hot and cold things cold because it's a god. It's so willfully ignorant you might as well worship the U.S. mail. "It came again! Praise Jesus!" Stupidity isn't a form of knowing things. Thunder is high-pressure air meeting low-pressure air--it's not God bowling. "Babies come from storks" is not a competing school of throught in medical school. We shouldn't teach both. The media shouldn't equate both. If Thomas Jefferson knew we were blurring the line this much between Church and State, he would turn over in his slave. As for me, I believe in evolution and intelligent design. I think God designed us in his image, but I also think God is a monkey.
Bill Maher (The New New Rules: A Funny Look At How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass)
During the 1980s, in California, a large number of Cambodian women went to their doctors with the same complaint: they could not see. The women were all war refugees. Before fleeing their homeland, they had witnessed the atrocities for which the Khmer Rouge, which had been in power from 1975 to 1979, was well known. Many of the women had been raped or tortured or otherwise brutalized. Most had seen family members murdered in front of them. One woman, who never again saw her husband and three children after soldiers came and took them away, said that she had lost her sight after having cried every day for four years. She was not the only one who appeared to have cried herself blind. Others suffered from blurred or partial vision, their eyes troubled by shadows and pains. The doctors examined the women - about a hundred and fifty in all - found that their eyes were normal. Further tests showed that their brains were normal as well. If the women were telling the truth - and there were some who doubted this, who thought the women might be malingering because they wanted attention or were hoping to collect disability - the only explanation was psychosomatic blindness. In other words, the women's minds, forced to take in so much horror and unable to take more, had managed to turn out the lights.
Sigrid Nunez (The Friend)
I never cared for poetry," I said. "Your loss," Sim said absently as he turned a few pages. "Eld Vintic poetry's thunderous. It pounds at you." "What's the meter like?"I asked, curious despite myself. "I don't know anything about meter," Simmon said distractedly he ran his finger down the page in front of him. "It's like this: "Sought we the Scrivani word-work of Surthur Long-lost in ledger all hope forgotten Yet fast-found for friendship fair the book-bringer Hot comes the huntress Fela, flushed with finding Breathless her breast her high blood rising To ripen the red-cheek rouge-bloom of beauty. "That sort of thing," Simmon said absently, his eyes still scanning the pages in front of him. I saw Fela turn her head to look at Simmon, almost as if she were surprised to see him sitting there. No, it was almost s if up until that point, he'd just been occupying space around her, like a piece of furniture. But this time when she looked at him, she took all of him in. His sandy hair, the line of his jaw, the span of his shoulders beneath his shirt. This time when she looked, she actually *saw* him. Let me say this. It was worth the whole awful , irritating time spent searching the Archives just to watch that moment happen. It was worth blood and the fear of death to see her fall in love with him. Just a little. Just the first faint breath of love, so light she probably didn't notice it herself. It wasn't dramatic, like some bolt of lightning with a crack of thunder following. It was more like when flint strikes steel and the spark fades almost fast for you to see. But still, you know it's there, down where you can't see, kindling.
Patrick Rothfuss (The Wise Man’s Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2))
Wow.You two seem to be right as rain again," Cole said from behind us. I could hear the undercurrent of rage beneath his voice. "I hate to interrupt this sudden case of the touchy-feelies, but with the three of us standing here, it almost feels like that spring day so long ago.Almost as if Jack hand't left for camp.Almost as if Jack had nothing to do with you going under,Nik." Jack winced, but he kept his eyes on me. "You should've seen her.Did you know that when she left your dorm that night, she came straight to me? Begged to go with me. Barely able to breathe for the pain." He enunciated each word. I studied Jack's face and shook my head. Jack dropped his arm from my shoulders. "You never let me explain. I ran to you,but you drove off.You didn't trust me." There was silence for a few long moments. "Would either of you care to know my opinion?" Cole said. "Shut up," we replied at the same time. Cole shrugged. "You know where to find me." He turned and walked across the parking lot to the sidewalk that led around the corner of the post office. I watched him until he disappeared, than I faced Jack again. Jack rougly ran both of his hands through his hair. "This is a mess." It sounded like he was talking to himself, not to me. "I know how it looked, but you should've let me explain. I hated you for leaving." He looked up at the sky. "I hated you." Jack took a step backward, away from me, and as he did,a voice called out to us. "Don't let him drive you apart!" We both turned toward the sound. Mary was sitting on a bench under the shelter of the bus stop. I hadn t noticed her before.She'd been watching us. She stood and came over. "That's what he wants. He's scared of anchors. I told you I have a theory about anchors.
Brodi Ashton (Everneath (Everneath, #1))
In the course of my life I have had pre-pubescent ballerinas; emaciated duchesses, dolorous and forever tired, melomaniac and morphine-sodden; bankers' wives with eyes hollower than those of suburban streetwalkers; music-hall chorus girls who tip creosote into their Roederer when getting drunk... I have even had the awkward androgynes, the unsexed dishes of the day of the *tables d'hote* of Montmartre. Like any vulgar follower of fashion, like any member of the herd, I have made love to bony and improbably slender little girls, frightened and macabre, spiced with carbolic and peppered with chlorotic make-up. Like an imbecile, I have believed in the mouths of prey and sacrificial victims. Like a simpleton, I have believed in the large lewd eyes of a ragged heap of sickly little creatures: alcoholic and cynical shop girls and whores. The profundity of their eyes and the mystery of their mouths... the jewellers of some and the manicurists of others furnish them with *eaux de toilette*, with soaps and rouges. And Fanny the etheromaniac, rising every morning for a measured dose of cola and coca, does not put ether only on her handkerchief. It is all fakery and self-advertisement - *truquage and battage*, as their vile argot has it. Their phosphorescent rottenness, their emaciated fervour, their Lesbian blight, their shop-sign vices set up to arouse their clients, to excite the perversity of young and old men alike in the sickness of perverse tastes! All of it can sparkle and catch fire only at the hour when the gas is lit in the corridors of the music-halls and the crude nickel-plated decor of the bars. Beneath the cerise three-ply collars of the night-prowlers, as beneath the bulging silks of the cyclist, the whole seductive display of passionate pallor, of knowing depravity, of exhausted and sensual anaemia - all the charm of spicy flowers celebrated in the writings of Paul Bourget and Maurice Barres - is nothing but a role carefully learned and rehearsed a hundred times over. It is a chapter of the MANCHON DE FRANCINE read over and over again, swotted up and acted out by ingenious barnstormers, fully conscious of the squalid salacity of the male of the species, and knowledgeable in the means of starting up the broken-down engines of their customers. To think that I also have loved these maleficent and sick little beasts, these fake Primaveras, these discounted Jocondes, the whole hundred-franc stock-in-trade of Leonardos and Botticellis from the workshops of painters and the drinking-dens of aesthetes, these flowers mounted on a brass thread in Montparnasse and Levallois-Perret! And the odious and tiresome travesty - the corsetted torso slapped on top of heron's legs, painful to behold, the ugly features primed by boulevard boxes, the fake Dresden of Nina Grandiere retouched from a medicine bottle, complaining and spectral at the same time - of Mademoiselle Guilbert and her long black gloves!... Have I now had enough of the horror of this nightmare! How have I been able to tolerate it for so long? The fact is that I was then ignorant even of the nature of my sickness. It was latent in me, like a fire smouldering beneath the ashes. I have cherished it since... perhaps since early childhood, for it must always have been in me, although I did not know it!
Jean Lorrain (Monsieur De Phocas)
Don't you want to preserve old things? But you can't, Anthony. Beautiful things grow to a certain height and then they fail and fade off, breathing out memories as they decay. And just as any period decays in our minds, the things of that period should decay too, and in that way they're preserved for a while in the few hearts like mine that react to them. That graveyard at Tarrytown, for instance. The asses who give money to preserve things have spoiled that too. Sleepy Hollow's gone; Washington Irving's dead and his books are rotting in our estimation year by year - then let the graveyard rot too, as it should, as all things should. Trying to preserve a century by keeping its relics up to date is like keeping a dying man alive by stimulants. So you think that just as time goes to pieces its houses ought to go too? Of course! Would you value your Keats letter if the signature was traced over to make it last longer? It's just because I love the past that I want this house to look back on its glamorous moment of youth and beauty, and I want its stars to creak as if to the footsteps of women with hoop-skirts and men in boots and spurs. But they've made it into a blondined, rouged-up old woman of sixty. It hasn't any right to look so prosperous. It might care enough for Lee to drop a brick now and then. How many of these - these animals - get anything from this, for all the histories and guide-books and restorations in existence? How many of them who think that, at best, appreciation is talking in undertones and walking on tiptoes would even come here if it was any trouble? I want it to smell of magnolias instead of peanuts and I want my shoes to crunch on the same gravel that Lee's boots crunched on. There's no beauty without poignancy and there's no poignancy without the feeling that it's going, men, names, books, houses - bound for dust - mortal-
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Beautiful and Damned)
One wonders why no one in church history has ever been considered a heretic for being unloving. People were anathematized and often tortured and killed for disagreeing on matters of doctrine or on the authority of the church. But no one on record has ever been so much as rebuked for not loving as Christ loved. Yet if love is to be placed above all other considerations (Col. 3:14; 1 Peter 4:8), if nothing has any value apart from love (1 Cor. 13:1–3), and if the only thing that matters is faith working in love (Gal. 5:6), how is it that possessing Christlike love has never been considered the central test of orthodoxy? How is it that those who tortured and burned heretics were not themselves considered heretics for doing so? Was this not heresy of the worst sort? How is it that those who perpetrated such things were not only not deemed heretics but often were (and yet are) held up as “heroes of the faith”? If there is an answer to this question, I believe it lies in the deceptive power of the sword. While God uses the sword of governments to preserve law, order, and justice, as we have seen, there is a corrupting principality and power always at work. Much like the magical ring in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, the sword has a demonic power to deceive us. When we pick it up, we come under its power. It convinces us that our use of violence is a justified means to a noble end. It intoxicates us with the unquenchable dream of redemptive violence and blinds us to our own iniquities, thereby making us feel righteous in overpowering the unrighteousness of others. Most of the slaughtering done throughout history has been done by people who sincerely believed they were promoting “the good.” Everyone thinks their wars are just, if not holy. Marxists, Nazis, the Khmer Rouge, Islamic terrorists, and Christian crusaders have this in common.
Gregory A. Boyd (The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church)
Les Poets de Sept ans Et la Mère, fermant le livre du devoir, S'en allait satisfaite et très fière sans voir, Dans les yeux bleus et sous le front plein d'éminences, L'âme de son enfant livrée aux répugnances. Tout le jour, il suait d'obéissance ; très Intelligent ; pourtant des tics noirs, quelques traits Semblaient prouver en lui d'âcres hypocrisies. Dans l'ombre des couloirs aux tentures moisies, En passant il tirait la langue, les deux poings A l'aine, et dans ses yeux fermés voyait des points. Une porte s'ouvrait sur le soir : à la lampe On le voyait, là-haut, qui râlait sur la rampe, Sous un golfe de jour pendant du toit. L'été Surtout, vaincu, stupide, il était entêté A se renfermer dans la fraîcheur des latrines: Il pensait là, tranquille et livrant ses narines. Quand, lavé des odeurs du jour, le jardinet Derrière la maison, en hiver, s'illunait , Gisant au pied d'un mur, enterré dans la marne Et pour des visions écrasant son oeil darne, Il écoutait grouiller les galeux espaliers. Pitié ! Ces enfants seuls étaient ses familiers Qui, chétifs, fronts nus, oeil déteignant sur la joue, Cachant de maigres doigts jaunes et noirs de boue Sous des habits puant la foire et tout vieillots, Conversaient avec la douceur des idiots ! Et si, l'ayant surpris à des pitiés immondes, Sa mère s'effrayait, les tendresses profondes, De l'enfant se jetaient sur cet étonnement. C'était bon. Elle avait le bleu regard, - qui ment! A sept ans, il faisait des romans, sur la vie Du grand désert où luit la Liberté ravie, Forêts, soleils, rives, savanes ! - Il s'aidait De journaux illustrés où, rouge, il regardait Des Espagnoles rire et des Italiennes. Quand venait, l'Oeil brun, folle, en robes d'indiennes, -Huit ans -la fille des ouvriers d'à côté, La petite brutale, et qu'elle avait sauté, Dans un coin, sur son dos, en secouant ses tresses, Et qu'il était sous elle, il lui mordait les fesses, Car elle ne portait jamais de pantalons; - Et, par elle meurtri des poings et des talons, Remportait les saveurs de sa peau dans sa chambre. Il craignait les blafards dimanches de décembre, Où, pommadé, sur un guéridon d'acajou, Il lisait une Bible à la tranche vert-chou; Des rêves l'oppressaient, chaque nuit, dans l'alcôve. Il n'aimait pas Dieu; mais les hommes qu'au soir fauve, Noirs, en blouse, il voyait rentrer dans le faubourg Où les crieurs, en trois roulements de tambour, Font autour des édits rire et gronder les foules. - Il rêvait la prairie amoureuse, où des houles Lumineuses, parfums sains, pubescences d'or, Font leur remuement calme et prennent leur essor ! Et comme il savourait surtout les sombres choses, Quand, dans la chambre nue aux persiennes closes, Haute et bleue, âcrement prise d'humidité, Il lisait son roman sans cesse médité, Plein de lourds ciels ocreux et de forêts noyées, De fleurs de chair aux bois sidérals déployées, Vertige, écroulement, déroutes et pitié ! - Tandis que se faisait la rumeur du quartier, En bas, - seul et couché sur des pièces de toile Écrue et pressentant violemment la voile!
Arthur Rimbaud