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"If, on the way back from the Passage des Patriarches to my apartment near Saint-Germain-des-Prés, I had thought of examining myself like a transpare… - René Daumal
"If, on the way back from the Passage des Patriarches to my apartment near Saint-Germain-des-Prés, I had thought of examining myself like a transparent foreign body, I should have discovered one of the laws which governs the behavior of "featherless bipeds unequipped to conceive the number pi" — Father Sogol's definition of the species to which he, you, and I belong. This law might be termed: inner resonance to influences nearest at hand. The guides on Mount Analogue, who explained it to me later, called it simply the chameleon law. Father Sogol had really convinced me, and while he was talking to me, I was prepared to follow him in his crazy expedition. But as I neared home, where I could again find all my old habits, I imagined my colleagues at the office, the writers I knew, and my best friends listening to an account of the conversation I had just had. I could imagine their sarcasm, their skepticism, and their pity. I began to suspect myself of naiveté and credulity, so much so that when I tried to tell my wife about meeting Father Sogol, I caught myself using expressions like "a funny old fellow," "an unfrocked monk," "a slightly daffy inventor," "a crazy idea.
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About René Daumal
René Daumal (March 16, 1908 – May 21, 1944) was a French writer, philosopher and poet.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Also Known As
Pen Names:
Mouchamiel
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Nathaniel
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Oncle Nathaniel
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Additional quotes by René Daumal
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.
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"It was at that moment that I called in a few of the top Fidgeters who, under my directions, set about organizing the destruction of the young. The method is quite straightforward; the children are taken at the time when their intelligence is not yet fully developed, and their passions respond to the slightest stimulation; they are made to live in companies, dressed and armed uniformly, and by means of magic speeches and collective physical exercises, whose secret is ours alone, we give them what we call "the cult of the common ideal"; this is an absolute devotion to a loud-mouthed, authoritarian person, or to a particular form of dress, or to some catch phrase, or to a certain grouping of colors, or whatever. All we need then is to have here two opposing groups of young people (or more than two, but an even number is preferable) who have been kept at a high level of emotional tension; the sole precaution to take is to leave no time for their brains to function, but that's easy enough. Then (are you with me?) when they have reached just the right pitch, they are let loose on one another...and afterwards, we can breathe easy for a while. This, at the same time, occupies and enriches the manufacturers and sellers of uniforms and armaments, and the authors of tracts which recommend the uses of carnage, one of whom wrote recently: "The young man who is not killed in the flower of youth is not a young man, he is the old man of tomorrow.
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