René Daumal Quotes

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 you have nothing, you try to give of yourself;
Trying to give of yourself, you see that you are nothing;
Seeing you are nothing, you desire to become;
In desiring to become, you begin to live.

When you strike off on your own, leave some trace of your passage which will guide you coming back: one stone set on another, some grass weighted by a stick. But if you come to an impasse or a dangerous spot, remember that the trail you have left could lead people coming after you into trouble. So go back along your trail and obliterate any traces you have left. This applies to anyone who wishes to leave some mark of his passage in the world. Even without wanting to, you always leave a few traces. Be ready to answer to your fellow men for the trail you leave behind you.

Before having taken even the first steps, we were slipping toward disaster - yes, toward giving up. For to devote a single minute to satisfying idle curiosity amounted to abandoning our goal and betraying our word. All our enthusiasm for exploration suddenly struck us as trivial, along with the clever pretexts we had found for those pastimes.

There is an art to finding your way in the lower regions by the memory of what you have seen when you were higher up. When you can no longer see, you can at least still know. . .

So what’s the point? Only this: what is above knows what is below, what is below does not know what is above. While climbing, take note of all the difficulties along your path. During the descent, you will no longer see them, but you will know that they are there if you have observed carefully.

You cannot always stay on the summits. You have to come down again . . .

Alpinism is the art of climbing mountains by confronting the greatest dangers with the greatest prudence. Art is used here to mean the accomplishment of knowledge in action.

My observations are those of a beginner. As they are completely fresh in my mind and concern the first difficulties a beginner encounters, they may be more useful to beginners making their first ascents than treatises written by professionals. These are no doubt more methodical and complete, but are intelligible only after a little preliminary experience. The entire aim of these notes is to help the beginner acquire this preliminary experience a little faster.

Common experience is the gold reserve which confers an exchange value on the currency which words are; without this reserve of shared experiences, all our pronouncements are cheques drawn on insufficient funds.

Vol. 2, Essais et Notes

Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.

Each time dawn appears, the mystery is there in its entirety.

Con algo de dinero, se consigue sacar de la civilización las pocas satisfacciones fundamentales para el cuerpo. Lo demás, es camelo. Camelos, modelos y señuelos, en eso consiste toda nuestra vida, entre el diafragma y la tapa de los sesos. Mi Superior tenía razón: padezco una incurable necesidad de entender. No quiero morirme sin haber entendido por qué he vivido.

The Primecrat, when asked in his turn to demonstrate his ouroborism, cupped his hands and shouted through the trap door to his followers: “Take up military sports! For the sportsman of today is the soldier of tomorrow. The soldier of tomorrow will repel the invader and at the same time open up new markets for the industries of his country. The industries will prosper, the country will become rich, and thus it will be able to support associations which encourage military preparations and from these will emerge the soldiers of the day after tomorrow, who will repel the invader and at the same time open up new markets …”
The mechanical repeater was brought in. In somber mood, I recalled my whole life up to this day, and my head spun with the buzzing of a hundred and one ouroboristic worms. I remembered the drinking parties that made us thirsty and the thirst that made us drink; I thought back to Sidonius recounting his endless dream; to the people who worked to be able to eat and who ate to have the strength to work; to the black thoughts I drowned with such sadness in the cask and which were reborn in different hues. Between the vicious circles of the drinking party and those of the delusory paradises, I would never again be able to choose, I could no longer be part of their revolutions, I was from that moment no more than a wasteland.

A hope, which he thought long dead, glowed again in his heart.