"Why kid ourselves, people have nothing to say to one another., they talk of 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 damnest, but it doesn't work, they keep it all, and then they start all over again, trying to find a place for it. 'You're pretty, mademoiselle,' they say. And life takes hold of them again, until the next time, and 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 that they've kept it all to themselves...."
Celine, Journey to the End of the Night
"The question I find myself asking now is, What good has it done me, all this beauty? Is beauty not just another consumable, like wine? One drinks it in, one drinks it down, it gives one a brief, pleasing, heady feeling, but what does it leave behind? The residue of wine is, excuse the word, piss; but what is the residue of beauty? What is the good of it? Does beauty make us better people?"
J.M. Coetzee, "As a woman grows older"
"If, when a man has fallen into habits of idleness, of daydreaming and of sloth, another man were to awaken him one morniong with heavy blows from a whip, so that he would not work from pleasure worked now for fear, would not that man, the chastiser, indeed be his greatest friend and benefactor?"
Baudelaire, Intimate Journals
Back to work, back into the coal mines of the mind.
"And in between they boast that they've succeeded in getting rid of their unhappiness, but everyone knows it's not true and that they've kept it all to themselves...."
Celine, Journey to the End of the Night
"The question I find myself asking now is, What good has it done me, all this beauty? Is beauty not just another consumable, like wine? One drinks it in, one drinks it down, it gives one a brief, pleasing, heady feeling, but what does it leave behind? The residue of wine is, excuse the word, piss; but what is the residue of beauty? What is the good of it? Does beauty make us better people?"
J.M. Coetzee, "As a woman grows older"
"If, when a man has fallen into habits of idleness, of daydreaming and of sloth, another man were to awaken him one morniong with heavy blows from a whip, so that he would not work from pleasure worked now for fear, would not that man, the chastiser, indeed be his greatest friend and benefactor?"
Baudelaire, Intimate Journals
Back to work, back into the coal mines of the mind.