René Daumal > Quotes

“You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.”
― Rene Daumal

“This place has only three exits, sir: Madness, and Death.”
― Rene Daumal, A Night of Serious Drinking

“I am dead because I lack desire,
I lack desire because I think I possess,
I think I possess because I do not try to give,
In trying to give, you see that you have nothing,
Seeing that you have nothing, you try to give of yourself,
Trying to give of yourself, you see that you are nothing,
Seeing that you are nothing, you desire to become,
In desiring to become, you begin to live.”
― Rene Daumal

“Philosophy teaches how man thinks he thinks; but drinking shows how he really thinks.”
― Rene Daumal, A Night of Serious Drinking

“I am dead because I have no desire,
I have no desire because I think I possess,
I think I possess because I do not try to give;
Trying to give, I see that I have nothing,
Seeing that I have nothing, I try to give myself,
Trying to give myself, I see that I am nothing,
Seeing that I am nothing, I desire to become,
Desiring to become, I live.”
― René Daumal

“A knife is neither true nor false, but anyone impaled on its blade is in error.”
― Rene Daumal, Mount Analogue

“Words are made for a certain exactness of thought, as tears are for a certain degree of pain. What is least distinct cannot be named; what is clearest is unutterable.”
― Rene Daumal, A Night of Serious Drinking

“It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content… it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble, and from babble to confusion.”
― René Daumal, A Night of Serious Drinking

“The cock crowing in the milky dawn thinks its call raises the sun; the child howling in a closed room thinks its cries open the door. But the sun and the mother go their own way, following the laws of their beings. Those who see us, even though we cannot see ourselves, opened the door for us, answering our puerile calculations, our unsteady desires, and our awkward efforts with a generous welcome.”
― René Daumal, Mount Analogue

“it is very tempting, when you talk about the events of the past, to impose clarity and order upon what had neither one nor the other.”
― René Daumal, A Night of Serious Drinking

“Everyone pretended to understand so as not to interrupt.”
― René Daumal, A Night of Serious Drinking

“I'm very much aware I can't think. I'm a poet.”
― Rene Daumal

“The path of greatest desires often lies ...through the undesirable.”
― René Daumal, Mount Analogue

“All the means we've been given to stay alert we use to ornament our sleep. If instead of endlessly inventing new ways to make life more comfortable we'd apply our ingenuity to fabricating instruments to jog man out of his torpor!”
― René Daumal, Mount Analogue

“If you slip or have a minor fall, don't allow yourself an instant's pause. Find your pace again the moment you get up. In your mind take careful note of the circumstances of your fall, but don't let your body linger over what happened. The body constantly tries to draw attention to itself by its shiverings, its breathlessness, its palpitations, its shudders and sweats and cramps; but it reacts quickly to any scorn and indifference in its master. Once it senses that he is not taken in by its jeremiads, once it understands that it will inspire no pity for it that way, then it comes into line and obediently accomplishes its task.”
― René Daumal, Mount Analogue

“Eternity He who binds himself to a joy Does the winged life destroy But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity’s sun rise —WILLIAM BLAKE”
― René Daumal, Mount Analogue

“Keep your eye fixed on the way to the top, but don't forget to look right in front of you. The last step depends on the first. Don't think you're there just because you see the summit. Watch your footing, be sure of the next step, but don't let that distract you from the highest goal. The first step depends on the last.”
― René Daumal, Mount Analogue

“To return to the source of things, one has to travel in the opposite direction.”
― René Daumal, Mount Analogue

“Now, in my readings and in my travels I have heard, like you, about men of a superior type, possessing the keys to all our mysteries. Somehow I could not regard this as a simple allegory, this idea of an invisible humanity within visible humanity. Experience has proven, I told myself, that a man can reach truth neither directly nor alone; an intermediary must exist—still human in certain respects yet surpassing humanity in others. Somewhere on our Earth this superior humanity must exist, and it cannot be absolutely inaccessible. And so shouldn’t all my efforts be devoted to discovering it? Even if, in spite of my certainty, I were the victim of a monstrous illusion, I would have nothing to lose in making the effort, for in any case, without this hope, all life is meaningless. “But where to look? Where to begin? I had already traveled the world, stuck my nose everywhere, into all sorts of religious sects and mystical cults, but to each one it was always: maybe yes, maybe no. Why should I stake my life on this one rather than that one? You see, I had no touchstone.”
― René Daumal, Mount Analogue

“It is dangerous to preach humility to feeble souls. This distances them even more from themselves. Someone who is rigid, and turned inwards, can become aware of his destiny only by rebelling.”
― René Daumal

“The man who would find his vegetal negative and unite with it would restore the integrity of the cosmos.”
― René Daumal, Pataphysical Essays

“It's not the end of it when you've drowned your black thoughts, because afterwards there are blue thoughts and red thoughts and yellow thoughts...”
― René Daumal, A Night of Serious Drinking

“I think I possess because I do not try to give,
Trying to give, I see that I have nothing.”
― René Daumal, Mount Analogue

“Shoes, unlike feet, are not something you're born with. So you can choose what you want. At first be guided in your choice by people with experience, later by your own experience. Before long you will become so accustomed to your shoes that every nail will be like a finger to feel out the rock and cling to it. They will become a sensitive and dependable instrument, like a part of yourself. And yet, you're not born with them; when they're worn out, you'll throw them away and still remain what you are.”
― René Daumal, Mount Analogue

“Besides, often at difficult moments you'll catch yourself talking to the mountain, flattering it, cursing it, making promises or threats. And you will have the impression that the mountain answers you if you speak to it properly—by becoming gentler, more submissive. Don't think the less of yourself for that; don't be ashamed of behaving like those our specialists call primitives and animists. Just keep in mind, when you remember these moments later on, that your dialogue with nature was just the outward image of an inner dialogue with yourself.”
― René Daumal, Mount Analogue

“Art is here taken to mean knowledge realized in action.”
― René Daumal, Mount Analogue

“And then you grew up, went to school, and began to 'philosophize,' didn't you? We all go through the same thing. It seems that during adolescence a person's inner life is suddenly weakened, stripped of its natural courage. In his thinking he no longer dares stand face to face with reality or mystery; he begins to see them through the opinions of 'grown-ups,' through books and courses and professors. Still, a voice remains which is not completely muffled and which cries out every so often—every time its gag is loosened by an unexpected jolt in the routine. The voice cries out its great questioning of everything, but we stifle it again right away.”
― René Daumal

“I went for him, shook him by the shoulders with nothing better to shout at him but 'Why? Why?'
He answered me gravely, 'It's true. But you must begin to think of *how*.”
― René Daumal

“Sogol’s aim was to measure the power of thought as an absolute value.
“This power,” said Sogol, “is arithmetical. In fact, all thought is a capacity to grasp the divisions of a whole. Now, numbers are nothing but the divisions of the unity, that is, the divisions of absolutely any whole. In myself and others, I began to observe how many numbers a man can really conceive, that is, how many he can represent to himself without breaking them up or jotting them down: how many successive consequences of a principle he can grasp at once, instantaneously; how many inclusions of species as kind; how many relations of cause and effect, of ends to means; and I never found a number higher than four. And yet, this number four corresponded to an exceptional mental effort, which I obtained only rarely. The thought of an idiot stopped at one, and the ordinary thought of most people goes up to two, sometimes three, very rarely to four.”
― Rene Daumal, Mount Analogue

“Having no lead to follow, we were swept up by words, memories, manias, grudges, and solidarities. Having no goal to aim for, we wasted what little life there was in our thoughts on joining in with a pun, speaking ill of common acquaintances, avoiding unpleasant facts, riding hobbyhorses, pushing at open doors, making faces, and preening ourselves.”
― René Daumal, A Night of Serious Drinking