The Book of Disquiet Flashcards
a thinking heart?
Could it think, the heart would stop beating.
sameness.
…and so its all the same.
we surrender to sensation.
we uselessly surrender ourselves to pointless sensation, as befits our cerebral nerves.
Life, a roadside inn. Death, an abyssal coach.
Life is a roadside inn where I have to stay until the coach from the abyss pulls up. . . Night will fall on us all and the coach will pull up.
Stupid unbelief.
Today, people have lost their faith for the same reason their elders had it–without knowing why.
A nauseating stench.
…the low-tide smell wafted over the Tagus and putridly spread over the streets near the shore. The stench was crisply nauseating, with a cold torpor of lukewarm sea. I felt life in my stomach, and my sense of smell shifted to behind my eyes.
Exhortation to nihilists.
Artisans of morbidity, let us excel in teaching others how to cast off all illusions. Spectators of life, let us peer … with the pre-weariness of knowing that we’ll see nothing new or beautiful. Weavers of despair, let us weave only shrouds… for our useless sensations.
Superstitious Rights
The cult of Humanity, with its rites of Freedom and Equality, always struck me as a revival of those ancient cults in which gods were like animals or had animal heads.
Humanity: just another species.
Humanity, … a mere biological idea … signifying nothing more than the animal species we belong to, … no more deserving of worship than any other animal species.
Resignation.
“the patience of millions of souls resigned like my own to their daily lot, their useless dreams, and their hopeless hopes.
Death, an emancipation.
In death [man is] no longer a slave, even if he wept on giving up his slavery.
