PREMIUM FEATURE
Advanced Search Filters
Filter search results by source, date, and more with our premium search tools.
Nothing would stop her from doing something, even if it killed her. Doing something for absolutely no reason, perhaps, but still doing something, suc… - Marie Vieux-Chauvet
" "Nothing would stop her from doing something, even if it killed her. Doing something for absolutely no reason, perhaps, but still doing something, such is what life demands from human beings. Faint whiffs of hope would stir up illusions she had thought quite dead. So this is what helps, she told herself as she walked. So this is why suicide cannot be the normal culmination of a human life. I am going to try to do something. I'm going to try to believe that I can still make myself useful. She looked at the sky, the trees, the flowers, the people, as if she were seeing them for the first time. She opened her handbag and put money in the hands of beggars; confronted with a skeletal mother and her four starving, crying babies, she took stock of her own sufferings and found them acceptable. (chapter 12)
English
Collect this quote
About Marie Vieux-Chauvet
Marie Vieux-Chauvet (born Marie Vieux; September 16, 1916 – June 19, 1973), was a novelist, poet and playwright who was born and educated in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
Also Known As
Alternative Names:
Colibri
•
Marie Vieux
•
Marie Chauvet
Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.
Additional quotes by Marie Vieux-Chauvet
Enhance Your Quote Experience
Enjoy ad-free browsing, unlimited collections, and advanced search features with Premium.
Freedom is an inmost power. That is why society limits it. In the light of day our thoughts would make monsters and madmen of us. Even those with the most limited imagination conceal something horrifying. Our innumerable flaws are proof of our monstrously primitive origin. Rough drafts that we are. And we will remain so as long as we lack the courage to hack a path through the tangled undergrowth of life and walk with eyes fixed on the truth. The hard conclusion to an ephemeral life on the road to perfection. One can't reach it without sacrifice and suffering. I would like to be sure that Beethoven died satisfied to have written his concertos. Without this certainty, what would be the point of the painful anxiety of a Cézanne searching for a color that escapes him? Or of the anguish of a Dostoyevsky grasping at God in the thoughts swarming within the hellish complexity of the soul! All of them proof of another life, mysterious and intangible, clamoring for its share of immortality. Each of us must find within ourselves the possibility to meet such demands. It is a matter of will and action. Of choosing to be puppets or to be human beings. As for me, I sometimes feel I have gone off course, standing for years in front of a door that would not open for me and that I was afraid to force. Afraid perhaps out of sheer terror of facing the truth. When the time comes to follow my own path, I lose my nerve. Oh, what wouldn't I give to seize the essential thread of my thought once and for all! Something I can't define is rising from my innermost being in short-lived flashes. And here I am, my hands open and more empty than ever. (p72-3)
Loading...