Isidor Ducasse Lautréamont citáty

„Nahradím melancholii odvahou, pochybnosti jistotou, zoufalství nadějí, zlé dobrým, stížnosti povinností, skepticismus vírou, sofismata chladnou vyrovnaností a pýchu skromností.“

„Všechna mořská voda by nestačila na smytí duševní skvrny od krve.“

„Ačkoli podle některých filozofů je docela těžké odlišit šaška od melancholika, život sám o sobě je komické drama nebo dramatická komedie.“

„Sbohem až na věčnost, kde se ty a já neshledáme.“

„Existují lidé, kteří si kladou za cíl, ve jménu vznešených kvalit srdce, které vytváří jejich představivost nebo které možná sami mají, pět ódy na jiné lidské bytosti. Pokud jde o mě, využívám svého génia k zobrazení potěšení z krutosti: potěšení, která nejsou přechodná nebo umělá; ale která vznikla spolu s člověkem a zanikne s ním. Nemůže být génius spolčen s krutostí v tajných paktu s prozřetelnosti? Anebo je krutost neslučitelná s géniem?“

“Farewell until eternity, where you and I shall not find ourselves together.”

“Although according to certain philosophers it is quite difficult to distinguish the jester from the melancholic, life itself being a comic drama or a dramatic comedy.”

“I replace melancholy by courage, doubt by certainty, despair by hope, malice by good, complaints by duty, scepticism by faith, sophisms by cool equanimity and pride by modesty.”

“There are those whose purpose in writing is, by means of the noble qualities of heart which their imagination invents or which they themselves may have, to seek the plaudits of other human beings. For my part, I use my genius to depict the delights of cruelty: delights which are not transitory or artificial; but which began with man and will end with him. Cannot genius be allied with cruelty in the secret resolutions of Providence? Or can one, being cruel, not have genius?”

“God grant that the reader, emboldened and having become at present as fierce as what he is reading, find, without loss of bearings, his way, his wild and treacherous passage through the desolate swamps of these sombre, poison-soaked pages; for, unless he should bring to his reading a rigorous logic and a sustained mental effort at least as strong as his distrust, the lethal fumes of this book shall dissolve his soul as water does sugar.”

“I hail you, old ocean! Old ocean, you are the symbol of identity: always equal unto yourself. In essence, you never change, and if somewhere your waves are enraged, farther off in some other zone they are in the most complete calm. You are not like man — who stops in the street to see two bulldogs seize each other by the scruff of the neck, but does not stop when a funeral passes. Man who in the morning is affable and in the evening ill-humoured. Who laughs today and weeps tomorrow. I hail you, old ocean!”

“I will leave no memoirs.”