Sublime

you are an ascetic, a monk, a hermit! . . . A book, a pen behind your ear, a learned research — that’s where your spirit soars!

Car il n’y a pas de souci plus constant et plus cuisant, pour l’homme libre, que celui de chercher un objet OU un être devant qui s’incliner.

I don’t like falseness, fathers, I want the truth! And the truth is not in gudgeons, I’ve already declared as much! Father monks, why do you fast? Why do you expect a heavenly reward for that? For such a reward, I’ll go and start fasting, too! No, holy monk, try being virtuous in life, be useful to society without shutting yourself up in a monaster

I remember it was precisely he who marveled most of all when he got acquainted with the young man, who interested him greatly and with whom he used—not without inner pangs—to have occasional intellectual altercations.

There is nothing more seductive for man than the freedom of his conscience, but there is nothing more tormenting either.

La tête bien garnie, Janine Ceccaldi est une femme de caractère qui, adolescente, a lu avec passion Fiodor Dostoïevski. L’écrivain russe l’a marquée au point que, presque octogénaire, elle connaît encore par cœur des passages entiers de Crime et Châtiment, des Frères Karamazov, des Possédés, un roman cher au cœur de son fils, celui qu’il dit avoir