The morality of art consists, for everyone, in the side that flatters its own interests. People do not like literature.
On certain occasions art can shake very ordinary spirits, and whole worlds can be revealed by its clumsiest interpreters.
Then they wondered if there were men in the stars. Why not? And as creation is harmonious, the inhabitants of Sirius ought to be huge, those of Mars middle-sized, those of Venus very small. Unless it is the same everywhere. There are businessmen, pol...
In the end idealism annoyed Bouvard. ‘I don’t want any more of it: the famous cogito is a bore. The ideas of things are taken for the things themselves. What we barely understand is explained by means of words that we do not understand at all! Su...
Abstraction can provide stumbling blocks for people of strange intelligence.
Ils en conclurent que la syntaxe est une fantaisie et la grammaire une illusion.
Quelle bassesse que de penser toujours au prolongement de son existence! La vie n'est bonne qu'à la condition d'en jouir. (ch. III)
How wonderful to find in living creatures the same substance as those which make up minerals. Nevertheless they felt a sort of humiliation at the idea that their persons contained phosphorous like matches, albumen like white of egg, hydrogen gas like...
Sometimes, in a daze, they completely dismantled the cadaver, then found themselves hard put to it to fit the pieces together again.
