Quotessence
Home / Books / Mr Palomar

Mr Palomar

Book by Italo Calvino · 12 quotes · Perception, Reality, Self

Filter quotes by topic

AllPerceptionRealitySelfSilenceTruthUniverseAcceptanceCalvinoDarknessEgoHuman ConditionHumanityKnowledgeLifeLife PhilosophyLiteratureNaturePlatoReadingSimplicity

Mr Palomar Quotes

“The blackbirds peck on the lawn and no doubt consider the dialogue of the Palomars the equivalent of their own whistles. We might just as well confine ourselves to whistling, he thinks. Here a prospect that is very promising for Mr Palomar’s thinking opens out; for him the discrepancy between human behavior and the rest of the universe has always been a source of anguish. The equal whistle of man and blackbird now seems to him a bridge thrown over the abyss.”

HumanityHuman Condition
Book:Mr Palomar
Create image

“The segmentation of legs and tail into rings, the speckling of tiny granulous plates on his head and belly give the gecko the appearance of a mechanical device; a highly elaborate machine, its every microscopic detail carefully studied, so that you begin to wonder if all that perfection is not squandered, in view of the limited operations it performs. Or is this perhaps the secret: content to be, does he reduce his doing to the minimum? Can this be his lesson, the opposite of the morality that, in his youth, Mr Palomar wanted to make his: to strive always to do something a bit beyond one’s means?”

NatureLife PhilosophySimplicity
Book:Mr Palomar
Create image

“In dealing with every person one should know where to place himself with regard to that person, should be sure of the reaction the presence of the other inspires in him – dislike or attraction, dominion or subjugation, discipleship or mastery, performance as actor or as spectator – and on the basis of these and their counterreactions one should then establish the rules of the game to be applied in their play, the moves and counter-moves to be made. But for all this, even before he starts observing the others, one should know well who he is himself. Knowledge of one’s fellow has this special aspect: it passes necessarily through knowledge of oneself; and this is precisely what Palomar is lacking. Not only knowledge is needed, but also comprehension, agreement with one’s own means and ends and impulses, which is like saying the possibility of exercising a mastery over one’s own inclinations and actions that will control them and direct them but not coerce them or stifle them. The people he admires for the rightness and naturalness of their every word and every action are not only at peace with the universe but, first of all, at peace with themselves. Palomar, who does not love himself, has always taken care not to encounter himself face to face; this is why he preferred to take refuge among the galaxies; now he understands that he should have begun by finding an inner peace. The universe can perhaps go tranquilly about its business; he surely cannot.”

SelfUniverseEgo
Book:Mr Palomar
Create image

“If the ancients had been able to see it as I see it now, Mr. Palomar thinks, they would have thought they had projected their gaze into the heaven of Plato's ideas, or in the immaterial space of the postulates of Euclid; but instead, thanks to some misdirection or other, this sight has been granted to me, who fear it is too beautiful to be true, too gratifying to my imaginary universe to belong to the real world. But perhaps it is this same distrust of our senses that prevents us from feeling comfortable in the universe. Perhaps the first rule I must impose on myself is this: stick to what I see.”

LiteratureStarsSpacePerceptionPlatoCalvino
Book:Mr Palomar
Create image

“A person, for example, reads in adulthood a book that is important for him, and it makes him say, "How could I have lived without reading it!" and also, "What a pity I did not read it in my youth!" Well, these statements do not have much meaning, especially the second, because after he has read that book, his life becomes the life of a person who has read that book, and it is of little importance whether he read it early or late, because now his life before that reading also assumes a form shaped by that reading.”

LifeTimeReading
Book:Mr Palomar
Create image

“At this point the only thing Palomar can do was erase from his mind all models and the models of models. When this step is also taken, then he finds himself face to face with reality – hard to master and impossible to homogenize – as he formulates his 'yesses' and his 'noes', his 'buts'. To do this, it is better for the mind to remain cleared, furnished only by the memory of fragments of experience and of principles understood and not demonstrable. This is not a line of conduct from which he can derive special satisfaction, but it is the only one that proves practicable for him.”

Reality
Book:Mr Palomar
Create image