“There is no rest for the humble except in despising the great, whose only thought of the people is inspired by self-interest or sadism.”
Work
When it was published in 1932, this revolutionary first fiction redefined the art of the novel with its black humor, its nihilism, and its irreverent, explosive writing style, and made Louis-Ferdinand Celine one of France's--and literature's--most important 20th-century writers. The picaresque adventures of Bardamu, the sarcastic and brilliant antihero of Journey to the End of the Night move from the battlefields of World War I (complete with buffoonish officers and cowardly soldiers), to French West Africa, the United States, and back to France in a style of prose that's lyrical, hallucinatory, and hilariously scathing toward nearly everybody and everything. Yet, beneath it all one can detect a gentle core of idealism.
Quotes
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“There is no rest for the humble except in despising the great, whose only thought of the people is inspired by self-interest or sadism.”
“Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn't...”
“Philosophizing is simply one way of being afraid, a cowardly pretense that doesn't get you anywhere.”
“The mind is satisfied with phrased, but not the body, the body is more fastidious, it wants muscles. A body always tells the truth, that's why it's usually depressing and disgusting to look...”
“You need a heart and a certain amount of knowledge to go further than other people.”
“And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn’t enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I’ve nev...”