Ashley’s Reviews > On the Heights of Despair > Status Update

“Only he who has separated time from existence lives this drama: fleeing the latter, he is crushed by the for-mer. And he feels how time, like death, gains ground.”

“A little knowledge is delightful; a lot, disgusting. The more you know, the less you want to know. He who has not suffered from knowledge has never known anything.”

“Substituting for our subjective plight an objective one, we hope to lighten our burden and avoid the reproaches which we should in fact address to our-selves. But such objectification actually deepens our unhappiness and, presenting it as cosmic fatality, shuts off any possibility of lessening it or of making it more bearable.”

“Self-control and sustained inner effort are required in order to diminish unhappiness. All efforts to attain happiness, on the other hand, are entirely futile.”

“As for Christianity, it knows no love: it only knows forbearance or compassion, allusions to love rather than love itself.”

“Love born in suffering hides too many tears and sighs not to have its rays stained by a bitter clarity. There is too much torment, renunciation, and anxiety in this love for it to be anything but infinite forbearance. You forgive everything, you accept everything, you justify everything. But is this still love? How can one love when one is removed from everything?”

“All men have the same defect: they wait to live, for they have not the courage of each instant. Why not invest enough passion in each moment to make it an eternity? We all learn to live only when we no longer have anything to expect, because we do not live in the living present but in a vague and distant future.”

“Sometimes I am overcome and I would prefer to forget all. Interiorization leads to inner collapse, because the world penetrates you and crushes you with its overbearing weight. Is it surprising, then, that some would have recourse to anything-from vulgarity to art—in order to forget?
I HAVE No ideas, only obsessions. Anybody can have ideas. Ideas have never caused anybody's downfall.

“At times, the beauty of a flower is enough to justify in my eyes the principle of universal finality while at others, the smallest cloud troubling the serenity of the sky rekindles my somber pessimism. Those who interiorize excessively discover symbolic meanings in the most insignificant aspects of nature.”

“Through work, man has moved from subject to object; in other words, he has become a deficient animal who has betrayed his origins.”