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If it were possible to talk to the unborn, one could never explain to them how it feels to be alive, for life is washed in the speechless real.

Jacques Barzun

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The House of Intellect

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Barzun, Jacques. The House of Intellect. Harper & Brothers, 1959, ch. 6.

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The great mystery is not that we should have been thrown down here at random between the profusion of matter and that of the stars; it is that from our very prison we should draw, from our own selves, images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.

Andre Malraux

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Malraux, Andre. Les Noyers de l'Altenburg [The Walnut Trees of Altenburg]. Gallimard, c. 1948.

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We are becoming like cats, slyly parasitic, enjoying an indifferent domesticity. Nice and smug in "the social," our historic passions have withdrawn into the glow of an artificial coziness, and our half-closed eyes now seek little other than the peaceful parade of television pictures.

Jean Baudrillard

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Baudrillard, Jean. Cool Memories: 1980-1985. Editions Galilee, 1987, ch. 1.

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We know now that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day's work at Auschwitz in the morning.

George Steiner

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Steiner, George. Language and Silence. Faber and Faber, 1967.

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We shouldn't maltreat our idols: the gilt comes off on our hands.

Gustave Flaubert

Madame Bovary

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Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary: Moeurs de Province [Madame Bovary: Provincial Manners]. Revue de Paris, 1 Oct. 1856 - 15 Dec. 1856. Serial.

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Current Citation

Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary, edited and translated by Lydia Davis. Penguin Classics, 2011, pt. 3, ch. 6.

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To laugh is proper to man.

Francois Rabelais

Gargantua and Pantagruel

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Rabelais, Francois [published as Alcofribas Nasier]. Les horribles et épouvantables faits et prouesses du très renommé Pantagruel Roi des Dipsodes, fils du Grand Géant Gargantua [The Horrible and Terrifying Deeds and Words of the Very Renowned Pantagruel King of the Dipsodes, Son of the Great Giant Gargantua]. Vol. 1, 1532, bk. 1, prefatory note.

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Rabelais, Francois. Gargantua & Pantagruel. Dover Publications, 2016, bk. 1, prefatory note.

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We know the truth, not only by the reason, but by the heart.

Blaise Pascal

Pensées

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Pascal, Blaise. Pensées [Thoughts]. Paris: Chez G. Desprez, 1670, no. 1.

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Pascal, Blaise. "Pensées." Pensées and Other Writings, edited by Anthony Levi, translated by Honor Levi. Oxford University Press, 2008, no. 1.

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Let us give Nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do.

Michel de Montaigne

Essays

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De Montaigne, Michel. "De l'Experience [Of Experience]." Essais [Essays]. Paris: Simon Millanges and Jean Richer, 1580.

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De Montaigne, Michel. "On Experience." The Complete Essays, edited and translated by M. A. Screech. Penguin Classics, 1993.

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Every revolutionary ends by becoming either an oppressor or a heretic.

Albert Camus

The Rebel

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Camus, Albert. L'Homme Revolte [The Rebel]. Gallimard, 1951.

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I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.

Simone de Beauvoir

The Blood of Others

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De Beauvoir, Simone. Le Sang des autres [The Blood of Others]. Gallimard, 1945, ch. 5.

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In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other.

Voltaire

Philosophical Dictionary

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Voltaire. "Argent [Money]." Dictionnaire Philosophique [Philosophical Dictionary]. c. 1764.

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Things are always at their best in their beginning.

Blaise Pascal

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Pascal, Blaise [published as Louis de Montalte]. "February 25, 1656." Les Provinciales ou Les Lettres Escrites [The Provincial Letters]. c. 1657, letter 4.

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In the desert there is all-and yet nothing…God is there and man is not.

Honoré de Balzac

La Comédie humaine

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De Balzac, Honoré. "Une passion dans le desert [A Passion in the Desert]." Revue de Paris, 26 Dec. 1830.

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They have all a lively faith in the perfectibility of man, they judge that the diffusion of knowledge must necessarily be advantageous, and the consequences of ignorance fatal; they all consider society as a body in a state of improvement, humanity as a changing scene, in which nothing is, or ought to be, permanent; and they admit that what appears to them today to be good, may be superseded by something better tomorrow.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Democracy in America

On Americans.

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Original Citation

Tocqueville, Alexis De. De La Democratie en Amerique [Democracy in America]. Vol. 1, London: Saunders and Otley, 1835, ch. 18, pt. 6.

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Current Citation

Tocqueville, Alexis De. Democracy in America: The Complete and Unabridged Volumes I and II, translated by Henry Reeve. Bantam Classics, 2000, vol. 1, ch. 18, pt. 6.

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