[Large countries'] patriotism is different: they are buoyed by their glory, their importance, their universal mission. The Czechs loved their country… - Milan Kundera

Even though man himself is mortal, he can imagine neither the end of space nor of time nor of history nor of a people, for he always lives in an illusory infinitude.
Those who are fascinated by the idea of progress do not suspect that everything moving forward is at the same time bringing the end nearer and that joyous watchwords like 'forward' and 'farther' are the lascivious voice of death urging us to hasten to it.

Of course, even before Flaubert, people knew stupidity existed, but they understood it somewhat differently: it was considered a simple absence of knowledge, a defect correctable by education. In Flaubert's novels, stupidity is an inseparable dimension of human existence. It accompanies poor Emma throughout her days, to her bed of love and to her deathbed, over which two deadly agélastes, Homais and Bournisien, go on endlessly trading their inanities like a kind of funeral oration. But the most shocking, the most scandalous thing about Flaubert's vision of stupidity is this: Stupidity does not give way to science, technology, modernity, progress; on the contrary, it progresses right along with progress!

ذلك أن شغف المعرفة عند الروائي لا يستهدف السياسة ولا التاريخ. ما الجديد الذي بإمكان روائي أن يكتشفه حول الأحداث الموصوفة والمناقشة في آلاف الكتب الرصينة المتنوعة؟