#le jardin d'épicure

[exhaled-spirals]

« There was a time when our planet was not suitable for mankind [...]; a time will come when it will cease to be suitable [...]. The last inhabitants of earth [...] will have forgotten all the arts and all the sciences. They will huddle wretchedly in caves alongside the glaciers that will then roll their transparent masses over the half-obliterated ruins of the cities where now men think and love, suffer and hope. The last desperate survivors of humankind will know nothing of us, nothing of our genius, nothing of our love; yet will they be our latest-born children and the blood of our blood.

[...] Women, children, old men, crowded pell-mell in their noisome caves, will peep through fissures in the rock and watch a sombre sun mount the sky above their heads; dull yellow gleams will flit across his disk, like flames playing about a dying torch, while a dazzling snow of stars will shine on all the day long in the black heavens, through the icy air. This is what they will see [...]. One day the last survivor, void of hatred as of love, will exhale to the unfriendly sky the last human breath. And the globe will go rolling on, bearing with it through silent space the ashes of humanity, the poems of Homer and the august remnants of Greek marbles, frozen to its icy surface.

From the bosom of this dead world, where the human soul has dared to do so much, no thought will ever rise again towards the infinite — at least no human thought. For who can tell if another thought will not grow into consciousness of itself, and whether the Earth, grave of humanity, might not be the crib of a new soul? What soul, I cannot tell. The insect's, perhaps. Side by side with mankind, and in spite of him, [they] have already wrought marvels. Who can foretell the future reserved for their activity and patience? [...] Who knows if they may not one day develop consciousness of themselves and the world they live in? Who knows if, in their time and season, they too may not praise God? »

— Anatole France, The Garden of Epicurus (1908)

#quote #anatole france #le jardin d'épicure #humanity #insects #death #english

[clubrogernimier]

Vivre, c'est agir.

Anatole France, Le Jardin d'Épicure

[ladee-gram-r]

''Le charme qui touche le plus les âmes est le charme du mystère.'' Citation de Anatole France  Le jardin d'Épicure (1895)

[from-books-with-love]

Ma faiblesse m'est chère. Je tiens à mon imperfection comme à ma raison d'être.

Anatole France, Le Jardin d’Epicure.

#anatole france #le jardin d'épicure #literature #french quote #weakness #be yourself #about me #from books with love

[exhaled-spirals]

« Les mondes meurent, puisqu’ils naissent. Il en naît, il en meurt sans cesse. Et la création, toujours imparfaite, se poursuit dans d’incessantes métamorphoses. [...] Les cieux, qu’on croyait incorruptibles, ne connaissent d’éternel que l’éternel écoulement des choses.

[...] Quand nous disons la vie, nous entendons l’activité de la substance organisée, dans les conditions où nous voyons qu’elle se manifeste sur la terre. Mais il se peut que la vie se produise aussi dans des milieux différents, à des températures très hautes ou très basses, sous des formes inconcevables. [...] 

Il se peut aussi que ces millions de soleils, joints à des milliards que nous ne voyons pas, ne forment tous ensemble qu’un globule de sang ou de lymphe dans le corps d’un animal, d’un insecte imperceptible, éclos dans un monde dont nous ne pouvons concevoir la grandeur et qui pourtant ne serait lui-même, en proportion de tel autre monde, qu’un grain de poussière. Il n’est pas absurde non plus de supposer que des siècles de pensée et d’intelligence vivent et meurent devant nous en une minute dans un atome. »

— Anatole France, Le jardin d’Épicure

#quote #anatole france #le jardin d'épicure #space #life #french

[exhaled-spirals]

What is a book ? A series of little printed signs—essentially only that. It is for the reader to supply the forms and colours and sentiments to which these signs correspond. [...] Or, if you prefer it put otherwise, each word in a book is a mysterious finger that sets a fibre of our brain vibrating like a harp-string, and so evokes a note from the sounding-board of our soul. No matter how skilful, how inspired, the artist's hand; the sound it awakes depends on the quality of the strings within ourselves.

Anatole France, The Garden of Epicurus

#quote #anatole france #le jardin d'épicure #books #reading #english