Mark André ’s Reviews > The Book of Disquiet: The Complete Edition > Status Update
Mark André
is on page 337 of 432
Some say there’s no life without hope, others that hope makes life meaningless. For me, bereft of both hope and despair, life is just a picture in which I am included but that I watch as if it were a play with no plot, performed merely to please the eye—an incoherent ballet, the stirring of leaves on a tree, clouds that change color with the changing light, random networks of ancient streets in odd parts of the city.
— Jun 13, 2019 11:48AM
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Mark André
is on page 409 of 432
Perhaps there are supreme forces, the god or devils of the Truth in whose shadow we wander, for whom I am just a lustrous fly resting for a moment before their gaze.
I felt myself to be a fly when I imagined I felt it.
..I looked up at the ceiling to check there was no supreme being wielding a ruler to squash me..
..when I looked again, the fly..had disappeared.
..the office was once more bereft of all philosophy
— Jul 16, 2019 08:36AM
I felt myself to be a fly when I imagined I felt it.
..I looked up at the ceiling to check there was no supreme being wielding a ruler to squash me..
..when I looked again, the fly..had disappeared.
..the office was once more bereft of all philosophy
Mark André
is on page 403 of 432
Speaking and writing make no difference to our basic instinct to survive, which is quite unconscious. All our abstract intelligence is good for is constructing systems, or semi-systematic ideas, which for animals is a simple matter of lying in the sun. Even our ability to imagine the impossible may not be a unique talent, for I’ve seen cats staring at the moon and for all I know they may be wishing for it.
— Jul 15, 2019 04:10PM
Mark André
is on page 403 of 432
Vasquez is the same as all men of action: captains of industry and commerce, politicians, men of war, religious and social idealists, great poets and artists, beautiful women, spoilt children.
The winner is the one who thinks only those thought that will bring him victory. The rest, the vague world of humanity in general, amorphous, sensitive, imaginative, and fragile, are nothing but the backdrop ...
— Jul 13, 2019 04:58PM
The winner is the one who thinks only those thought that will bring him victory. The rest, the vague world of humanity in general, amorphous, sensitive, imaginative, and fragile, are nothing but the backdrop ...
Mark André
is on page 401 of 432
The alcohol of grand words and long sentences, which, like waves, rise with their rhythmic breathing and fall again smiling, ironic snakes of foam in the sad magnificence of the dark night.
— Jul 13, 2019 11:51AM
Mark André
is on page 400 of 432
The wretchedness of my condition is in no way affected by the words I am writing, and out of which I am shaping..this random book of thoughts.
Faced by the vast, starry sky and the enigma of so many souls, faced by the night of the unknown abyss and the chaos of utter ignorance—faced by all this...what I write on this paper soul of mine remains fast here..and has little to do with the great expanses of the universe
— Jul 12, 2019 12:10PM
Faced by the vast, starry sky and the enigma of so many souls, faced by the night of the unknown abyss and the chaos of utter ignorance—faced by all this...what I write on this paper soul of mine remains fast here..and has little to do with the great expanses of the universe
Mark André
is on page 399 of 432
The farther we advance in life, the more we become convinced of two contradictory truths. The first is that, confronted by the reality of life, all the fictions of literature and art pale into insignificance. Though it is true that the latter afford us a nobler pleasure than life...they are just dreams from which one awakens, not memories or nostalgic longings with which we might later live a second life.
— Jul 11, 2019 08:41AM
Mark André
is on page 399 of 432
Nothing satisfies me, nothing consoles me, everything—whether or not it has ever existed—satiates me. I neither want my soul nor wish to renounce it. I desire what I do not desire and renounce what I do not have. I can be neither nothing nor everything: I’m just the bridge between what I do not have and what I do not want.
— Jul 09, 2019 09:25AM
Mark André
is on page 399 of 432
The rustic, the reader of novels, the pure ascetic: these three are truly happy men, because they have all renounced their personality—the first because he lives by instinct, which is impersonal, the second because he lives through his imagination, which is oblivion, and the third because he does not live and, not yet having died, sleeps.
— Jul 09, 2019 09:19AM
Mark André
is on page 398 of 432
Happy is the man who renounces his life in favor of the imagination and finds pleasure in the contemplation of other people’s lives, experiencing not the impressions themselves but the external spectacle of those impressions. Happy the man, who renounces everything and from whom, therefore, nothing can be taken or subtracted.
— Jul 09, 2019 09:13AM
Mark André
is on page 398 of 432
Happy the man who demands no more from life than what life spontaneously gives him and who guides himself with the instinct of cats who seek the sun when there is sun and, when there is no sun, find what warmth they can. Happy is the man who renounces his life in favor of the imagination and finds pleasure in the contemplation of other people’s lives, experiencing not the impressions themselves (continued)
— Jul 09, 2019 09:09AM
