Clerambault quotes

In the effort to convince themselves, philosophers and aesthetics forged theories to prove that the great directing principle was to abandon oneself to the stream of a united life instead of directing it, or more modestly following one’s own little path in peace.

It was a matter of pride to be no longer oneself, to be no longer free to reason, for freedom was an old story in these democracies.

One gloried to be a bubble tossed on the flood—some said of the race and others of the universal life. These fine theories, from which men of talent managed to extract receipts for art and thought, were in full flower in 1914.

This type of writer is born to please the public, for he does not see faults in men, and enhances their small merits, so that even those who see through him are grateful.

If we cannot amount to much, a good appearance is a consolation, and we love to be reflected in eyes which lend beauty to our mediocrity.

This widespread sympathy, which delighted Clerambault, was not less sweet to the three who surrounded him at this moment.

Since in the wars of today, in which entire peoples are engulfed, thoughts as well as guns are enrolled. They slay the soul, they reach beyond the seas, and destroy after centuries have passed.

Thought is the heavy artillery which works from a distance.

Naturally Clerambault aimed his pieces, also the question for him was no longer to see clearly, largely, to take in the horizon, but to sight the enemy—it gave him the illusion that he was helping his son.

… prop up his will to believe in the holiness of the cause, for everything which went to prove that the enemy alone had wanted war, was the sole enemy of peace, and that to make war on the enemy was really to wish for peace.

There was proof enough and to spare; there always is; all that is needed is to know when to open and shut your eyes

… But nevertheless Clerambault was not entirely satisfied. These half-truths, or truths with false tails to them, produced a secret uneasiness in the conscience of this honest man, showing itself in a passionate irritation against the enemy, which grew more and more.

He did not understand them, but he bore them no ill will on that account. He liked to call himself old-fashioned, it made him feel superior, and there are many in the world like him, who pride themselves on their lack of comprehension.

For we must all plume ourselves as we can; some of us on what we have, others on what we have not.

Camus was willing to admit that Clerambault could write. He knew something of the art himself—and his respect for his brother-in-law increased in proportion to the “puffs” he read in the papers, and he liked to chat with him.

“You old humbug,” said his father, laughing gaily, “What does happen then all day long in your trenches?”

“We take care of ourselves; kill time, the worst enemy of all.”

Clerambault slapped him amicably on the back.

As the railway carriage drew out of the station he leaned from the window and followed with his eyes the tearful faces of his family fading in the distance, and he thought:

“Poor dears, you are their victims and we are yours.”

The day after his return to the front the great spring offensive was let loose, which the talkative newspapers had announced to the enemy several weeks beforehand.

“It is the cruelest blow of all,” said Perrotin, “to lose at our age, such a friend as your poor boy was to you …”

“The most cruel is not his loss,” said the father, “it is that I contributed to his death.”

“What do you mean, my good friend?” said Perrotin in surprise. “How can you imagine such things to add to your trouble?”

“What do you mean, my good friend?” said Perrotin in surprise. “How can you imagine such things to add to your trouble?”

“It was I who shut his eyes,” said Clerambault bitterly, “and he has opened mine.”

Perrotin pushed aside the work, which according to his habit he had continued to ruminate upon during the conversation, and looked narrowly at his friend, who bent his head, and began his story in an indistinct voice, sad and charged with feeling.

They were armed with the will not to hear, or rather with a remarkable not-will to hear. Their minds were as impervious to contrary arguments as a duck’s feathers to water.

Men in general are endowed, for their comfort, with a precious faculty; they can make themselves blind and deaf when it does not suit them to see and hear

, and when by chance they pick up some inconvenient object, they drop it quickly, and forget it as soon as possible.

This is the most ignoble and shameful servitude of all! … By what right do a hundred, a thousand, one or forty millions of men, demand that I shall renounce my soul? Each of them has one, like mine.

Forty millions of souls together often make only one, which has denied itself forty millions of times.

… I think what I think. Go you and do likewise. The living truth can be reborn only from the equilibrium of opposing thoughts. To make the citizen respect the city, it must be reciprocal; each has his soul.

Each of them has one, like mine. Forty millions of souls together often make only one, which has denied itself forty millions of times. …

I think what I think. Go you and do likewise.

The living truth can be reborn only from the equilibrium of opposing thoughts. To make the citizen respect the city, it must be reciprocal; each has his soul. It is his right and his first duty is to be true to it.

The real lie is to fear the truth and try to stifle it. Even if you were a thousand times right, if you resort to force to crush a sincere mistake, you commit the most odious crime against reason itself.

If reason is persecutor, and error persecuted, I am for the victim, for error has rights as well as truth.

… Truth—the real truth, is to be always seeking what is true, and to respect the efforts of those who suffer in the pursuit.

but if the mind can constantly rise without rest or interruption, in the world of fact progress is made step by step, and a scant few inches are gained in the whole of a lifetime.

Humanity limps along, and your mistake, the only one, is that you are two or three days’ journey ahead of it

, but—perhaps with good reason—that is one of the mistakes most difficult to forgive.

… has listened to words of wisdom, but it is rare to see the wise men offer themselves as a sacrifice, though it would do no harm if the world should see some of them stake their lives on their doctrines, as in the heroic days.

Sacrifice is the condition of fecundity.

To make others believe, you must believe first yourself, and prove it. Men do not see a truth simply because it exists, it must have the breath of life; and this spirit which is ours, we can and ought to give.

His breath and his eyes alone are free; ‘I hope,’ says his look. And his breath declares, ‘I will!’ With the help of these he struggles to release himself. We are the look and the breath, that is what makes a free man.”

“The look is enough for me,” said Perrotin gently.

“And without the breath I should die!” exclaimed Clerambault.

“The look is enough for me,” said Perrotin gently.

“And without the breath I should die!” exclaimed Clerambault.

In a man of thought there is a wide interval between the word and the deed. Even when a thing is decided upon, he finds pretexts for putting it off to another day, for he sees only too clearly what will follow;

Clerambault found out at last that he had received about a score of wounds; seventeen, to be exact. He had been literally sprinkled—he called it “interlarded”—with shrapnel.

“Wounded in seventeen places!” cried Clerambault.

“I have only a dozen left,” said the man.

“Wounded in seventeen places!” cried Clerambault.

“I have only a dozen left,” said the man.

“Did they cure the others?”

See where now the Great Bear inclines to the horizon—millions of eyes are looking at it, perhaps; but you cannot see them, only the far-off light makes a bond between their sight and yours.”

The solitude of the mind is only a painful delusion; it has no real existence, for even the most independent of us are members of a spiritual family.

This community of spirit has no relation to time or space; its elements are dispersed among all peoples and all ages. Conservatives see them in the past, but the revolutionists and the persecuted look to the future for them.

Clerambault furnished them with fresh arguments by a new article, where his aversion to war seemed incidentally to condemn revolution as well.

Poets are proverbially bad politicians.

It was a reply to “The Appeal to the Dead,” that Barrès, like an owl perched on a cypress in a graveyard, had wailed forth.

Clerambault, however, persisted.

The most rebellious people in the world are those who are forced to rebellion after a lifetime of submission.

I remember once to have seen a big sheep so worried by a dog that he finally threw himself upon him. The dog was overcome by this unexpected reversal of the laws of nature and ran away, howling with surprise and terror.

I remember once to have seen a big sheep so worried by a dog that he finally threw himself upon him. The dog was overcome by this unexpected reversal of the laws of nature and ran away, howling with surprise and terror.

The Dog-State is too sure of its own fangs to feel afraid of a few mutinous sheep; but the lamb Clerambault no longer calculated the danger; he simply put his head down and butted.

Generous and weak natures are prone to pass without transition from one extreme to another; so from an intensely gregarious feeling Clerambault had jumped at one bound to the extreme of individual isolation.

Deprived of sympathy, reduced to feed on itself, it perishes. In vain did Clerambault try to prove to himself that millions of other minds were in agreement with his own; it could not replace the actual contact with one living heart.

Faith is sufficient for the spirit, but the heart is like Thomas, it must touch to be convinced.

Clerambault had not foreseen this physical weakness; he felt stifled, his body seemed on fire, his skin burning, his life seemed to be drying up at the source. It was as if he were under an exhausted vacuum-bell. A wall kept him from the air.

Her grief longed to convince itself that after all there had been a holy cause, and the dead man was no longer there to help her to bear the truth.

Where two stand together there may be joy in the most terrible truths, but when one is alone they are mortal.

Clerambault understood it all, and his quick sympathies warned him of the pain he caused and shared; for he made the suffering of this woman his own.

“No matter how frightful they are not as bad as what you offer us.

Let us die with our illusions, rather than live without them.

Such a life as that, is a death in life!”

Out of your past illusions, make fires as the peasants do with the fallen leaves; the fresh grass, the new faith, will grow all the more thickly, for it is there waiting.

Nature does not die, it changes shape continually; like her, let us cast off the garment of the past.

Look carefully, and reckon up these hard years. You have fought and suffered for your country, and what have you gained by it? You have discovered the brotherhood of the men who fight and suffer. Is the price too high?

Setting these aside, the representatives—rari nantes—of the younger generation in civil life were those discharged from the army for physical incapacity, and a few broken-down wrecks of the war, like Moreau.

In these mutilated or diseased bodies the spirit was like a candle lighted behind broken windows.

Twisted and smoky, it seemed as if a breath would extinguish it. But it was all the more ardent for knowing what to expect from life.

How foolish to try to make the world better; let it be perfect, or go to pieces. It was a mysticism of the Great Overturning, of the Revolution, and it affected the minds of those least religious; they even went farther than the churches.

Foolish race of man! Always this faith in the absolute, which leads ever to the same intoxication, but the same disasters.

Always mad for the war between nations, for the war of classes, for universal peace.

What unexpected echoes he heard on their lips! He let his friends talk, while he himself said but little, but when he had left them, he would feel troubled and rather ironical. “Are those my thoughts?” he would say to himself.

It is terribly difficult for one soul to communicate with another, impossible perhaps, and who knows?

… Nature is wiser than we … it may be that this is for our good.

Speak out your whole thought, but with kindness; be like a good mother. It may not be given to her to make men of her children, but she can patiently teach them how to make men of themselves if they will.

You cannot set others free, in spite of them, and from the outside; and even if it were possible, what good would it do?

If they do not free themselves, tomorrow they will fall back into slavery. All you can do is to set a good example, and say: “There is the road, follow it and you will find Freedom.” …

to think that it was like that all the time before, and I thought nothing of it. …

What fools we are to wait till we lose a thing before we understand it!

And when we do want it, and ask pardon because we did not appreciate it before, all we hear is: ‘Too late!’ ”

“You know whether that is true! No, I think, is the answer.

Belief comes through love.

”

What consolation can one offer, when one does not believe in the ideal for which they lived, and which is killing them?—The long-sought answer finally came to Clerambault, almost unconsciously:

“You must care for men more than for illusion, or even for truth.”

Clerambault’s warm feelings were not reciprocated; and he was more attacked than ever, though for some months he had published nothing. In the autumn of 1917 the anger against him had risen to an unheard-of height.

“At least he is near you.”

“I have his soul,” she answered.

They had now reached the house, an old seventeenth century dwelling in one of the narrow ancient streets between the Luxembourg and St. Sulpice, where the pride of old France still subsists in retirement. The great door was shut even at this hour.

in the author of “The Appeal to the Living,” and the “Pardon from the Dead,” he saw at once an agent of the enemy, and with his thirst for revenge, he knew the opportunity had come.

Nothing can be more convenient than to detest those who differ from you, especially when you do not understand them

; but poor Clerambault had not this resource, for he did understand perfectly. These good people had had to bear injuries from the enemy; of course because they were struck by them, but also frankly, because of Injustice with a capital I;

“I have found it very hard to teach you, Papa.”

“Yes,” said Clerambault, “there is much that we can learn from our sons.”

And they smiled at each other in the silence.