Albert Cossery Quotes

What a nightmare!" cried Imtaz. "There's nothing gloomier than nature. You'll lose your sense of humor in the country. Unable to criticize the trees, your intelligence will lose its edge as you contemplate the plowed fields, and then, it'll be very easy for you to sing the praises of your fellow men because you won't be here to see and listen to them. Don't make that mistake. Never cut yourself off from mankind because, with distance, you're more likely to grant men extenuating circumstances. I love you too much to let you succumb to that weakness.

What drew him towards the outside was not the student, not the goat, not even the man in the down-at-heel shoes who joined them. Simply the street, like a blanched life-drained cadaver, fettered his whole attention. Never before had he seen it look so monstrously real, lit by the tired face of the moon, quiet and grave. There was about it, as it were, a sort of despairing dignity. You might have thought that the street had been killed by the weight of its suffering, that it had that moment died after long agony. It was old, the street, hobbling and twisted with age. Some of its houses were already crumbling in ruins. For years now it had sheltered the petty life of men. And now they had elected it to express the extent of their weariness. Naked beneath the prodigious brightness of the moon, it revealed all that men hid in the depths of their beings, the little hopes, the hates so huge. No longer could it hide anything; it cried out its despair from every corner.

Nour El Dine felt much more comfortable with the vagabonds, the rabble born to commit sordid offenses. At least you could frighten them. But these disreputable intellectuals were forever breaking down all sense of authority in him. Nour El Dine considered himself a reasonable being; that is, he believed in the existence of the government and in the speeches pronounced by ministers. He had blind faith in the institutions of the civilized world. The attitude of Yeghen and his fellow men always disconcerted him; they appeared not to realize that there was a government. They were not against the government; they simply were not aware of it.

So much beauty in the world, so few eyes to see it.

This easy obedience to tyrants, which often verged on devotion, always surprised him. He had come to believe that the majority of human beings aspired only to slavery. He had long wondered by what ruse this enormous enterprise of mystification orchestrated by the wealthy had been able to spread and prosper on every continent. Karamallah belonged to that category of true aristocrats who had tossed out like old soiled clothes all the values and all the dogma that these infamous individuals had generated over centuries in order to perpetuate their supremacy. And so his joy in being alive was in no way altered by these stinking dogs' enduring power on the planet. On the contrary, he found their stupid and criminal acts to be an inexhaustible source of entertainment -- so much so that there were times when he had to admit he would miss this mob were they to disappear; he feared the aura of boredom that would envelop mankind once purged of its vermin.

Gohar smiled at the thought of El Kordi, at his exaggeration of his troubles, more fictitious than real, and his constant search for human dignity. "What is most futile in man," he thought, "is this search for dignity." All these people trying to maintain their dignity! For what? The history of mankind is a long, bloody nightmare only because of such nonsense.