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Muriel Barbery

Muriel Barbery Quotes

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Famous Muriel Barbery Quotes

“Elsewhere the world may be blustering or sleeping, wars are fought, people live and die, some nations disintegrate, while others are born, soon to be swallowed up in turn - and in all this sound and fury, amidst eruptions and undertows, while the world goes its merry way, bursts into flames, tears itself apart and is reborn: human life continues to throb.”

PeopleWorldWayHumansMayWarDiesTurnsNationsSoundBornSleepTearsHuman LifeFlamesElsewhereFuryMerryRebornEruptionUndertow
Author:Muriel Barbery
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“...This is the first time I have met someone who seeks out people and who sees beyond. [...] We never look beyond our assumptions and, what's worse, we have given up trying to meet others; we just meet ourselves. We don't recognize each other because other people have become our permanent mirrors. If we actually realized this, if we were to become aware of the fact that we are alone in the wilderness, we would go crazy. [...] As for me, I implore fate to give me the chance to see beyond myself and truly meet someone.”

PeopleIfsGivingTryingFirstsLooksFactsGivenChanceFateCrazyMetsFirst TimeGive MeMirrorsPermanentAssumptionWildernessGiven Up
Author:Muriel Barbery
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“..when I say that "he's a truly nasty man," I mean he has so thoroughly renounced everything good that he might have inside him that he's already like a corpse even though he's still alive. Because truly nasty people hate everyone, to be sure, but most of all themselves. Can't you tell when a person hates himself? He becomes a living cadaver, it numbs all his negative emotions but also all the good ones so he won't feel nauseated by who he is.”

PeopleMenFeelsMeanPersonsStillsMightHateEmotionAliveNegativeNastyCorpsesNegative EmotionsCadaversNasty People
Author:Muriel Barbery
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“We musn't forget old people with their rotten bodies, old people who are so close to death, something that young people don't want to think about. We musn't forget that our bodies decline, friends die, everyone forgets about us, and the end is solitude. Nor must we forget that these old people were young once, that a lifespan is pathetically short, that one day you're twenty and the next day you're eighty.”

PeopleThinkingWantEndsBodyYoungDiesNextForgetOne DaySolitudeTwentiesDeclineNext DayOld PeopleEightyRottenClose To Death
Author:Muriel Barbery
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“But many intelligent people have a sort of bug: they think intelligence is an end in itself. They have one idea in mind: to be intelligent, which is really stupid. And when intelligence takes itself for its own goal, it operates very strangely: the proof that it exists is not to be found in the ingenuity or simplicity of what it produces, but in how obscurely it is expressed.”

PeopleThinkingMindIdeasEndsFoundGoalStupidProduceIntelligentSimplicityProofBugsIngenuityReally Stupid
Author:Muriel Barbery
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“Colombe Josse is the older Jesse daughter. Colombe Jesse is also a sort of tall blonde leek who dresses like a penniless Bohemian. If there is one thing I despise, it is the perverse affectation of rich people who go around dressing as if they were poor, in second-hand clothes, ill-fitting gray bonnets, socks full of holes, and flowered shirts under threadbare sweaters. Not only is it ugly, it is also insulting: nothing is more despicable than a rich man's scorn for a poor man's longing.”

PeopleIfsMenHandsPoorRichOne ThingGratitudeClothesDaughterDressesLongingIllUglyHolesShirtsTallGrayDespiseDressingsScornRich PeopleFittingInsultingSockBlondeRich ManPoor ManSweatersDespicableBohemianSecond HandBonnetsSecond Hand Clothes
Author:Muriel Barbery
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“Some people are incapable of perceiving in the object of their contemplation the very thing that gives it its intrinsic life and breath, and they spend their entire lives conversing about mankind as if they were robots, and about things as though they have no soul and must be reduced to what can be said about them - all at the whim of their own subjective inspiration.”

PeopleIfsGivingSaidSoulInspirationMankindObjectsBreathsContemplationIncapableRobotsSubjectiveWhim
Author:Muriel Barbery
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