Here at this point I remembered that all languages are fill of images and metaphors whose origin is being lost, together with the art from which they… - Primo Levi

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Here at this point I remembered that all languages are fill of images and metaphors whose origin is being lost, together with the art from which they were drawn: horsemanship having declined to the level of an expensive sport, such expressions as ‘belly to the ground’ and ‘taking the bit in ones teeth’ are unintelligible and sound odd […] and even mysterious today. In the same way, since Nature is conservative, we carry in our coccyx what remains of a vanished tail.

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About Primo Levi

Primo Levi (31 July 1919 – 11 April 1987) was an Italian chemist and author of memoirs, short stories, poems and novels. He joined an anti-Fascist group at the start of the Second World War but was captured and taken to the German concentration camp at Auschwitz. Levi survived the Holocaust and returned to Italy.

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Additional quotes by Primo Levi

All took leave from life in the manner which most suited them. Some praying, some deliberately drunk, others lustfully intoxicated for the last time. But the mothers stayed up to prepare the food for the journey with tender care, and washed their children and packed their luggage; and at dawn the barbed wire was full of children's washing hung out in the wind to dry. Nor did they forget the diapers, the toys, the cushions and the hundreds other small things which mothers remember and which children always need. Would you not do the same? If you and your child were going to die tomorrow, would you not give him to eat today?

In every part of the world, wherever you begin by denying the fundamental liberties of mankind, and equality among people, you move toward the concentration camp system, and it is a road on which it is difficult to halt.

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