Louis Ferdinand Celine

The biggest defeat in every department of life is to forget, especially the things that have done you in, and to die without realizing how far people can go in the way of crumminess. When the grave lies open before us, let's not try to be witty, but on the other hand, let's not forget, but make it our business to record the worst of the human viciousness we've seen without changing one word. When that's done, we can curl up our toes and sink into the pit. That's work enough for a lifetime.

>From "Journey to the End of the Night," translated by Ralph Mannheim, New Directions paperbacks, 1983, page 18.

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Quotes by Celine:

To philosophize is only another way of being afraid and leads hardly anywhere but to cowardly make-believe. My personal favorite!

Experience is a dim lamp, which only lights the one who bears it.

Most people die at the last minute; others 20 years beforehand, some even earlier. They are the wretched of the earth.

It is of men, and them only, that one should always be frightened.

The greatest defeat, in anything, is to forget, and above all to forget what it is that has smashed you, and to let yourself be smashed without ever realizing how throughly devilish men can be...that is enough of a job for a whole lifetime.

God is the invention of failure.

The more one is hated, I find, the happier one is.

Was Celine a Fascist?

What do you think.

Don't think. If thinking, think nothing.

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Reminds me of one of my favorites:

First Guy: What do you think?

Second Guy: As little as possible.

-- BobBockholt

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