Quotessence
Home / Authors / Romain Gary
Romain Gary

Romain Gary Quotes

Diplomat

Filter quotes by topic

AllThe GaspHuman NatureHumanityRomain GaryAgingLoveImpotenceMen S HealthTruth Of LifeDecline

Famous Romain Gary Quotes

“Tm merely trying to do my job. God, Scholscher, how can we talk of progress when we’re still destroying, all around us, life’s most beautiful and noble manifestations? Our artists, our architects, our scientists, our poets, sweat blood to make life more beautiful, and at the same time we force our way into the last forests left to us, with our finger on the trigger of an automatic weapon, and we poison the oceans and the very air we breathe with our atomic devices. Perhaps this madman Morel will succeed in rousing public opinion. By God, I feel I could join him in his maquis. We’ve got to resist this degradation. Are we no longer capable of respecting nature, or defending a living beauty that has no earning power, no utility, no object except to let itself be seen from time to time? Liberty, too, is a natural splendor on its way to becoming extinct. I’m speaking for myself to get it off my chest, because I haven't the courage to act like Morel. It’s absolutely essential that man should manage to preserve something other than what helps to make soles for shoes or sewing machines, that he should leave a margin, a sanctuary, where some of life’s beauty can take refuge and where he himself can feel safe from his own cleverness and folly. Only then will it be possible to begin talking of a civilization. A utilitarian civilization will always go on to its logical conclusion-forced labor camps. We must leave a margin. And besides, let me tell you . . . There's nothing to be so proud of, is there?”

NatureSave The PlanetSave NatureDecline Of CivilizationDecline Of The WestSave AnimalsDecline Of Western Civilization
Book:The Roots of Heaven
Create image

“I am very old,’ he said gravely. He added, as a matter of course: ‘I’m glad to die in Africa.’ 'And why?' 'Because this is where mankind began. The cradle of humanity is in Nyasaland. It’s been pretty well proved.’ 'Odd reason.’ 'One dies better at home.' 'Yet another one, I thought, who’s trying to find a home on earth.”

Coming HomeHome Sweet HomeHome Is Where The Heart IsHome Is Where The Love Is
Book:The Roots of Heaven
Create image

“...He could strike down the prisoners and he could stamp on the may-beetles, but what he was aiming at was out of reach and could not be killed. At last he understood. He had undertaken the task which no army, no police force, no militia, no party, no organization could successfully carry out. It would have been necessary to kill all human beings down to the very last, and even then it was possible, yes, it was probable that their imperishable spirit would remain behind them like a smile of heaven over the face of earth.”

Never Give UpStrength Of CharacterSurvivorsStrength Of SpiritPrison Camp
Book:The Roots of Heaven
Create image

“Remember - when you came back from the states thirty years ago, and you had caught on to the importance of putting up a good front, and keeping it up at all costs. Yes, and you make a bundle of those wrapping papers of yours! And now you yourself are nothing but wrapping paper. With nothing inside.”

EmptynessPretending It S OkayPutting Up WallsPretending To Be OkPutting Up A Smiley Face
Book:Au-delà de cette limite votre ticket n'est plus valable
Create image

“But from the height where we were I could see, on the other side of the ravine that hid the stream, a whole part of the forest quivering as though shaken by a cruel fear, and the tops of the trees suddenly tilting, and falling like feathers; and then I saw them, packed closely against one another, the great gray shapes I knew so well. I thought: Soon there will be no more room in the modem world for such need of space, for such royal clumsiness, such magnificent freedom. And I could not help smiling, as I did each time I saw them, with relief, as though the sight of them reassured me about an essential presence. In this age of impotence, this age of taboos, of slavery, inhibitions, and almost physiological submission, when man is triumphing over his most ancient truths and renouncing his deepest needs, it always seemed to me, as I listened to the earth’s most ancient thunder, that we had not yet been finally cut off from our sources, that we had not yet lost ourselves forever, that we had not yet been once for all castrated and enslaved, that we were not yet altogether subdued.”

Hope For HumanityNature HealsNot Lost
Book:The Roots of Heaven
Create image

“I took a good look at those dogs, out of whom gelatine and soap would be made, and I said to myself: You wait a little, you human master race, I'll teach you, I'll teach you to respect life. I'm going to have it out with you, and with your gas chambers, your atomic bombs and your need for soap . . . That evening I got together two or three lads off the roads —two from the Baltic states and a Polish Jew — and we carried out a little commando raid on the pound — gave the keepers a good thrashing, set the dogs free and the hut on fire.”

HumanityLibertyAnimal RightsRespect For NatureRespect For AnimalsRespect For Life
Book:The Roots of Heaven
Create image

“Приехала полиция, стали снимать меня со стойки Эр Франса, я что-то вопил на угро-финском, вмешался Тонтон-Макут, вызвали сантранспорт… Признаюсь, что, потеряв надежду остаться непонятым и выразить таким образом мои братские чувства к близким по духу, к братьям, я впал в ярость и немного помахал кулаками. Потому что больше всего на свете я ненавижу насилие, а когда я увидел санитаров, то сразу понял, что будут усмирять. В таком случае единственный способ доказать свою нормальность — это двинуть кому-то по морде.”

Pseudoпсевдо
Book:Hocus Bogus
Create image

“Rotstein was particularly affected. He stretched himself out across his mattress, just where he had fallen. Morel longed to bend over him and turn him over on his legs again, like a fallen and abandoned insect. To help him to fly away. But there was no need to help him. He flew by himself every evening. 'Hey, Rotstein, Rotstein.' 'Yes.' 'Are you still alive?' 'Yes. Don’t interrupt. I’m giving a concert.' 'What are you playing?' 'Johann Sebastian Bach.' 'Are you mad? A German?' 'Precisely. That’s just the point. To restore the balance. You can’t leave Germany on its back forever. You’ve got to help it to its feet again.”

HumanityBalanceSurvivalConcentration CampsRestoring Happiness
Book:The Roots of Heaven
Create image

“My love, I caught sight of you a few moments ago, deep in conversation with a very sober-looking man, and I thought here is a bureaucrat sent by Reality to demand a full accounting, to investigate us on suspicion of fraud... on suspicion of being happy. Yes, there is something scandalous, something privileged and elitist about our love, because two people happily in love always turn their backs on the world; and so I am afraid. (From Laura’s note).”

LoveHappinessPrivilegeElitismScandalousFear Of LossFear Of LosingFear Of Losing What You Have
Book:Au-delà de cette limite votre ticket n'est plus valable
Create image

“Slowly I felt flooded with that agonizing and poignant confusion that surely comes to all aging men experiencing their first adolescent love. I had no great wish to go on living; what was the point of a flawed happiness. According to Bonnard, the hardest moment of all is when the artist longs to keep on but he’s conscience tells him that one brushstroke more will spoil the entire painting. And man has to know when to stop.”

LoveHappinessAgingEnd Of LifeArt Of LivingKnowing When To QuitFlawed Perfection
Author:Romain Gary
Create image

“This was what he stood for: a world where there would be room enough even for such a mass of clumsy and cumbersome freedom. A margin of humanity, of tolerance, where some of life’s beauty could take refuge. His eyes narrowed a little, and an ironic, bitter smile came to his lips. I know you all, he thought. Today you say that elephants are archaic and cumbersome, that they interfere with roads and telegraph poles, and tomorrow you’ll begin to say that human rights too are obsolete and cumbersome, that they interfere with progress, and the temptation will be so great to let them fall by the road and not to burden ourselves with that extra load. And in the end man himself will become in your eyes a clumsy luxury, an archaic survival from the past, and you’ll dispense with him too, and the only thing left will be total efficiency and universal slavery and man himself will disappear under the weight of his material achievement. He had learned that much behind the barbed wire of the forced labor camp: it was our education, a lesson be was not prepared to forget.”

Life LessonsHumanityHuman RightsToleranceAnimal RightsBeauty Of LifeIndustrializationWesternizationLabor Camp
Book:The Roots of Heaven
Create image

“He might all the same do a little something for us. We’re on our backs, doesn’t He see?' 'I’m doing my best, I tell you,' said Father Julien. 'I pray and I pray and I pray . . .' 'Even we find a way of doing something for the may- beetles.’ 'You don’t give a damn about the may-beetles, you bastards,' said Father Julien. 'You do it out of pride. If you weren’t in a forced labor camp you’d step on may-beetles without even noticing their existence. This is something that happens in the head, not in the heart. You’re bursting with pride, that’s what it is.”

PrideSurvivalSurvivorsConcentration CampGods PlanConcentration CampsGods PresenceLabor CampHuman Pride
Book:The Roots of Heaven
Create image

“J'étais jeune, plus jeune que je ne le croyais. Ma naïveté cependant était était vieille et désabusée. Éternelle en vérité: je la retrouve dans chaque génération nouvelle, depuis celle des "rats" de Saint-Germain-des-Prés, de 1947, jusqu'à la beat generation californienne qu'il m'arrive de fréquenter parfois, pour m'amuser à reconnaître, en d'autres lieux et d'autres visages, les grimaces de mes vingt ans.”

LifeInspirationalTimeGenerationsYouth
Book:La promesse de l'aube : + portfolio by Romain Gary
Create image

“He was to tell André Malraux later: “Clemeneau used to say: ‘War is a much too serious business to be left to the military.’ And look what happened to Communism when the Communists got hold of it or to the Catholic Church in the hands of the clergy. We are rapidly approaching a point when it will no longer be possible to trust scientists with science.”

ScienceChurchCommunismIronyClergyScientistsThe GaspCommunistsCannot Be Trusted
Book:The Gasp
Create image

“But because ivory was the first thing we were after when we came here at the turn of the century and because we’re the only ones to hunt with modem weapons, you’ve thought it smart to make elephant hunting the symbol of capitalist exploitation. [...] As long as the protection of the elephants was only a humanitarian idea, only a question of decency, of generosity, a margin of freedom to be preserved at all costs, his campaign had no chance of going very far with the governments concerned. But as soon as it threatened to turn into a political movement, it became explosive, and the authorities had to do something about it, take a real and active interest in the protection of the African fauna, forbid elephant hunting in all its ugly forms, ensure the threatened giants with all the protection and friendship they needed so much. He was convinced that some clever strategists among the governments concerned would do precisely this — and it was all he asked.”

PoliticsAnimal RightsPublic OpinionPolitical MovementsPoliticization
Book:The Roots of Heaven
Create image

“She was standing at the door, and the sheer visual delight, the sharp ache of happiness, something like the sight of fleeing moments of beauty that are so much a part of the life’s vanishing act, with its total absence of forever, filled him as usual with that greed, that tyrannical urge to seize, to keep and preserve and never lose again, which is perhaps how twenty thousand years ago the first image of an antelope came to be painted by an artist upon a rock. Then she put her blouse on and Time, the old robber baron, went by, carrying his loots away.”

TimePreservationTime FliesThe GaspVanishing LifeGreed For LifeGreedy ToMoments Of BeautyVanishing Act
Book:The Gasp
Create image

“I sat day after day in my little room, waiting for inspiration to visit me, trying to invent a pseudonym that would express, in a combination of noble and striking sounds, our dream of artistic achievement, a pen name grand enough to compensate for my own feeling of insecurity and helplessness at the idea of everything my mother expected from me.”

TryingLittlesIdeasEnoughFeelingsDreamInspirationMotherNamesWaitingSoundMy OwnRoomsAchievementNobleExpectedArtisticCombinationSatInsecurityPensOur DreamsHelplessnessPseudonyms
Book:Promise at Dawn
Create image