Anathemas and Admirations (59 page)

He could not put up with living in God’s wake.

Original Sin and Transmigration: both identify destiny with an
expiation
, and it is of no matter whether we are talking about Adam’s sin or those we committed in our previous existences.

The last leaves dance as they fall It takes a big dose of insensitivity to confront autumn.

We imagine we are advancing toward some goal, forgetting that we really advance only toward The Goal itself, toward the discomfiture of all the others.

Never unreal, Pain is a challenge to the universal fiction. What luck to be the only sensation granted a content, if not a meaning!

Despondency
. This English word, charged with all the nuances of collapse, will have been the key to my years, the emblem of my moments, of my negative courage, of my invalidation of all tomorrows.

When we have no further desire to show ourselves, we take refuge in music, that Providence of the abulic.

The reasons for persisting in Being seem less and less well founded, and our successors will find it easier than we to be rid of such obstinacy.

Once we are grazed by certainty, we no longer mistrust ourselves and others. Confidence, in all its forms, is a source of action, hence of error.

When we encounter someone
actual
our surprise is such that we wonder if we are not the victim of some vertigo.

What is the use of combing works of consolation, since they are legion and since only two or three count?

If you don’t want to explode with rage, leave your memory alone, abstain from burrowing there.

Whatever follows the laws of life — hence whatever decays — inspires me with reflections so contradictory that they border on mental confusion.