Muriel Barbery Quotes

Conclusion: better to be a thinking monk than a postmodern thinker.

Humans live in a world where the weak are dominant. This is a terrible insult to our animal nature, a sort of perversion or a deep contradiction.

To beauty, all is forgiven, even vulgarity. Intelligence no longer seems an adequate compensation for things.

Yes, our eyes may perceive, yet they do not observe; they may believe, yet they do not question; they may receive yet they do not search: they are emptied of desire, with neither hunger nor passion.

Art is emotion without desire.

Don't worry Renee, I won't commit suicide and I won't burn a thing. Because from now on, for you, I'll be searching for those moments of always within never. Beauty, in this world.

I know that they're all unhappy because nobody loves the right person the way they should and because they don't understand that it's really their own self that they're mad at.

The only purpose of cats is that they constitute mobile decorative objects.

I won't get any better by punishing the people I can't heal.

Music plays a huge role in my life. It is music that helps me to endure ... well ... everything there is to endure.

I may be indigent in name, position, and in appearance, but in my own mind I am an unrivaled goddess -

The strong ones among humans do nothing. They talk and talk again.

Don't let the cat out or the concierge in: this is the first principle of socialist ladies.

I may know that the world is an ugly place, I still don't want to see it.

Do you know that it is in your company that I have had my finest thoughts?

Because beauty consits of it's own passing, just as we reach for it. It's the ephemeral configuration of things in the moment, when you can see both their movement and their death.

since destiny always rings three times...

I understood that I was suffering because I couldn't make anyone else around me feel better.

If you want to heal Heal othersAnd smile or weepAt this happy reversal of fate

And on the way home I thought: pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language.

Because from now on, for you, I'll be searching for those moments of always within never/Beauty, in this world.

There are only two moments when everything is possible in this life, " said Petrus, "when one drinks, and when one makes up stories.

Clara looked at Maria and tried to understand what she must do so that Maria would be able to see her. But the little French girl cast all around her the bronze of infinite solitude.

Wine is the refined jewel that only a grown woman will prefer to the sparkling trinkets adored by little girls.

I suddenly felt my spirit expand, for I was capable of grasping the utter beauty of the trees.