Nicolas Bouvier > Quotes

“Traveling outgrows its motives. It soon proves sufficient in itself. You think you are making a trip, but soon it is making you - or unmaking you.”
― Nicolas Bouvier, The Way of the World

“That day, I really believed that I had grasped something and that henceforth my life would be changed. But insights cannot be held for ever. Like water, the world ripples across you and for a while you take on its colours. Then it recedes, and leaves you face to face with the void you carry inside yourself, confronting that central inadequacy of soul which you must learn to rub shoulders with and to combat, and which, paradoxically, may be our surest impetus.”
― Nicolas Bouvier, The Way of the World

“In the end, the bedrock of existence is not made up of the family, or work, or what others say or think of you, but of moments like this when you are exalted by a transcendent power that is more serene than love. Life dispenses them parsimoniously; our feeble hearts could not stand more.”
― Nicolas Bouvier, The Way of the World

“Traveling provides occasions for shaking oneself up but not, as people believe, freedom. Indeed it involves a kind of reduction: deprived of one’s usual setting, the customary routine stripped away like so much wrapping paper, the traveller finds himself reduced to more modest proportions - but also more open to curiosity, to intuition, to love at first sight.”
― Nicolas Bouvier, The Way of the World

“That day, I thought that I held something important and that my life would be changed. But nothing of this nature is acquired definitively. Like water, the world traverses you, and for a while, lends you its colours. It then draws back, leaving you once again to face the emptiness that one carries in oneself, to face that central insufficiency of the spirit that one must learn to live with, to fight, and which, paradoxically, is possibly our surest driving force.”
― Nicolas Bouvier

“The over-ripe, golden autumn which had taken hold of the town tugged at our heartstrings. The nomadic life makes you sensitive to the seasons: you rely on them, even become part of the season itself, and each time they change, it seems to have to tear yourself away from a place where you have learned to live.”
― Nicolas Bouvier, The Way of the World

“Time passed in brewing tea, the odd remark, cigarettes, then dawn came up. The widening light caught the plumage of quails and partridges...and quickly I dropped this wonderful moment to the bottom of my memory, like a sheet-anchor that one day I could draw up again.You stretch, pace to and fro feeling weightless, and the word 'happiness' seems too thin and limited to describe what has happened. In the end, the bedrock of experience is not made up of the family, or work, of what others say or think of you, but of moments like this when you are exalted by a transcendent power that is more serene than love. Life dispenses them parsimoniously; our feeble hearts could not stand more.”
― Nicolas Bouvier

“Finalement, ce qui constitue l'ossature de l'existence, ce n'est ni la famille, ni la carrière, ni ce que d'autres diront ou penseront de vous, mais quelques instants de cette nature, soulevés par une lévitation plus sereine encore que celle de l'amour, et que la vie nous distribue avec une parcimonie à la mesure de notre faible cœur.”
― Nicolas Bouvier, The Way of the World

“Comme une eau, le monde vous traverse et pour un temps vous prête ses couleurs. Puis se retire, et vous replace devant ce vide qu'on porte en soi, devant cette espèces d'insuffisance centrale de l'âme qu'il faut bien apprendre à côtoyer, à combattre, et qui, paradoxalement, est peut-être notre moteur le plus sûr.”
― Nicolas Bouvier

“Ce n'est jamais la vie qui décline, mais seulement l'idée qu'on parvient à s'en faire.”
― Nicolas Bouvier

“Quando ci si smarrisce, i progetti lasciano il posto alle sorprese, ed è allora, ma solamente allora, che il viaggio comincia.”
― Nicolas Bouvier

“Селото беше притихнало, но в средата на пустата улица бяха сложили три стола за нас и крива маса, покрита с червена носна кърпа в средата, като квадрат прясна кръв.”
― Nicolas Bouvier, The Way of the World

“„Често казват, че пътуванията са бягства, но за мен са по-скоро дирения. Има и неща, от които е препоръчително да бягаш. Например да си отидеш, за да не заемеш нишата, която обществото вече ти е приготвило. За да избегнеш маршрута: следване - диплома - докторат - професура - хонорис кауза - пенсионни осигуровки - пенсия - осигуровки за инвалидност - ковчег. Аз не съм осигурен.”
― Nicolas Bouvier, The Way of the World

“За турците заключава: "Между джамиите и спасителните им градини те си бяха създали едно по селски спокойно островче, добре защитено срещу кошмара, една цивилизация на пъпеша, на чалмата, на цветята от станиол, на брадата, късата дебела тояга и синовното уважение, на патладжана, арпаджика и пръднята и на непреодолимото влечение към градините със сини сливи, където привлечена от миризмата на зрели плодове, понякога нощем влизаше по някоя мечка, да се натъпче до насита и да получи страхотни колики.”
― Nicolas Bouvier, The Way of the World

“After all, one travels in order for things to happen and change; otherwise you might as well stay at home.”
― Nicolas Bouvier

“Някой ден ще се върна, ако трябва, яхнал метла.”
― Nicolas Bouvier, The Way of the World

“At home what is ‘wonderful’ tends to be an exception that’s arranged; it is useful, or at least edifying. In Persia it might just as well spring from an oversight, or a sin, or a catastrophe which, by breaking the normal run of events, offers life unexpected scope for unfolding its splendours before eyes that are always ready to rejoice in them.”
― Nicolas Bouvier, The Way of the World

“Beyond a certain degree of hardship or misery, life often revives and heals the scars. As time passed, deportation [to the concentration camps for the young woman] had become a kind of voyage and even, thanks to the almost terrifying capacity of memory to transform horror into courage, a voyage that she could easily mention. Any way of seeing the world is good, as long as one returns.”
― Nicolas Bouvier, The Way of the World

“Nous sommes nous aussi des animaux, et même si nous faisons tout pour l'oublier, nous sommes dans la continuité d'une lignée qui n'a pas gagné grand-chose depuis que l'Arche de Noé a permis de recommencer le monde.

Le hibou et la baleine : le couple est cocasse, mais il correspond en réalité à la façon dont l'écrivain organise l'univers en axes qui se répondent nécessairement : l'est et l'ouest, le dehors et le dedans, les paysages tirés vers le haut et les paysages tirés vers le bas, la diastole et la systole du cœur humain.

Parce qu'il n'affronte pas la lumière du jour, le hibou est symbole de tristesse, d'obscurité, de retraite solitaire et mélancolique. [...] Mais l'image du loubok, représentant un immense hibou perché sur la branche d'un arbre où pour les plumes, les yeux et le bec, les verts tendres se mêlent aux oranges vifs et aux jaunes, transforme l'oiseau nocturne en diurne, en oiseau du paradis, rappelant que l'obscurité ne va jamais sans la lumière.

Le hibou, lui-même double, forme avec la baleine un couple complémentaire. Elle, le féminin, le solaire, le tendre et gros cétacé, la Moby Dick bien-aimée, la protectrice de Jonas, celle qui nous avale mais nous protège, le "poisson" sauveur de toutes les religions, vivant dans l'obscurité comme le hibou mais dans les profondeurs salutaires, comme les mines de charbon où les poètes vont chercher les mots qui sauvent.”
― Nicolas Bouvier, Le hibou et la baleine

“Durante i miei anni di studio avevo onestamente fatto della "cultura" preconfezionata, del giardinaggio intellettuale, analisi, glosse, innesti; avevo esaminato minuziosamente alcuni capolavori, ma senza accorgermi del valore dell'esorcismo di quei modelli, perché da noi la stoffa della vita è così ben tagliata, ordinata, cucina dall'abitudine e dalla istituzioni che, in mancanza d'altro spazio, l'invenzione è confinata, in funzioni decorative e non ha compiti diversi dal "produrre divertente", e cioè tutto e nulla. Qui le cose andavano diversamente; la mancanza del necessario stimola, in certe situazioni, l'appetito dell'essenziale. La vita, ancora indigente, fin troppo aveva bisogno di forme e gli artisti - e includo nel termine tutti i contadini che sanno tenere un flauto o pitturano le loro carrette di sontuosi amalgami di colore - erano rispettati come intercessori, come guaritori.”
― Nicolas Bouvier, The Way of the World

“The horror the Japanese have of the unexpected and the decisions is requires.

The Japanese will become the most aesthetic people in the world.

Six Buddhist sects have sprung from the interpretation of the scriptures and on ceremonial days, their priests wear tunics of raspberry, saffron, pistachio or violet, which create a lovely effect on the gray-brown-green of the Japanese landscape.

The cemeteries are the fish ponds for the temples.

These foreign visitors demand that before they leave Japan, someone should wrap up the "soul of Japan" for them. What do they want? Suddenly, through a simple mental process, their ignorance should be transformed into knowledge, clear-cut and precise, please, so that they can discuss it when they get home. I judge them, but I too, would sometimes like to find my meal set in front of me and fast. We come to this thin and frugal country with our greedy metabolisms: the whole West is that way. The golden dishes, the maharajahs, the rubies as big as the duck eggs, that is what struck our first explorers, not the frugality that is truly one of the marks of Asia.

Have you ever drunk a good bottle of wine with a connaisseur? It is a form of torture.

Because of the rhythm of Noh, travel is so slow that winter always overtakes travelers en route. They travel in tiny steps across a sort of mental Tibet.

Japan: a self-sustaining island, rich in gold and in solver, excellent products, a disciplined and frugal population that carries cleanliness to the point of fanaticism, an always-appropriate alternation between honesty and hypocrisy, in short, the best governed state in the world.

Walking does help to support the insupportable.

When things turn bad, rather than expecting too much from people, one must sharpen one's relations with things.

The tao ( the philosophy of Lao-tzu, sixth century B.C ) taught that our mind is a troublemaker that interferes between life and us, that we are victims of our categories.

What exactly is Zen? For some it is a religion, for others a form of therapy, a means of liberation, a guide to character, a reaction of the Chinese spirit against the Indian spirit.

True saints are not always on hand for writers who are passing through, people who don't need what one knows. In the Orient, knowledge is given spoonful by spoonful to the people who are truly hungry and the word "secret" means nothing here.

In old Chinese Zen it was traditional to choose the gardener who knew nothing to succeed the master rather than one who knew too much.

In this style of decor, as in the food, there is an immateriality repeated again and again: make yourself small, don't hurt the air, don't would our eyes with your terrible colored shirts, don't be so restless and don't offend this slightly bloodless perfection that we have been tending for eight hundred years.

A crane preening his feathers, this elegant bird, so inexpressibly white, posed in the middle of the reeds, like a Ming vase.”
― Nicolas Bouvier, The Japanese Chronicles

“The splendid wooden mosque - which you can find if you search - nobody would think of showing you, being less aware of what they have than what they lack. They lack technology: we want to get out of the impasse into which too much technology has led us, our sensibilities saturated to the nth degree with Information and a Culture of distractions. We’re counting on their formulae to revive us; they’re counting on ours to live. Our paths cross without mutual understanding, and sometimes the traveler gets impatient, but there is a great deal of self-centeredness in such impatience.”
― Nicolas Bouvier, The Way of the World

“În ziua aceea, am crezut că dețin ceva, un adevăr care-mi va schimba viața. Însă nimic de această natură nu e dobândit pentru totdeauna. Lumea trece prin noi ca o apă și pentru o vreme ne împrumută aparența ei. Apoi se retrage și ne lasă în fața vidului pe care-l purtăm în noi, în fața acestui soi de incapacitate capitală a sufletului pe care trebuie să învățăm s-o suportăm, s-o înfruntăm și care, paradoxal, e poate resortul nostru cel mai sigur.”
― Nicolas Bouvier, The Way of the World

“Travel often provides an opportunity to break out of routine, but it does not provide - as we thought - freedom. Rather, it creates a sense of certain limitations: torn from his environment, deprived of his habits like a thick package, the traveler is reduced to more modest dimensions. It develops curiosity, intuition, and the ability to be disinterested in admiration.
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― Nicolas Bouvier, The Way of the World

“Un voyage se passe de motifs. Il ne tarde pas à prouver qu'il se suffit à lui-même. On croit qu'on va faire un voyage, mais bientôt c'est le voyage qui vous fait, ou vous défait.”
― Nicolas Bouvier, The Way of the World

“Chiar dacă nu știi unde vei dormi la noapte
Și ești încă departe de țintă
Să știi că nu există drum fără capăt
Nu fi trist

Luni de zile această inscripție ne-a servit drept Sesam și protecție în colțuri de țară unde străinii nu au fost iubiți niciodată. Influența și popularitatea unei asemenea poezii, destul de ermetice și vechi de peste cinci sute de ani, sunt extraordinare în Iran. Prăvăliași care stau pe vine în fața dughenelor își pun ochelarii ca să își citească versuri de la un trotuar la altul.”
― Nicolas Bouvier