Happiness Lies In The Fulfillment Of The

Civilization Is An Active Deposit Which Is Formed By The Combustion Of The Present With The Past. Neither In Countries Without A Present Nor In Those Without A Past Is It To Be Encountered. Proust In Venice, Matisse's Birdcages Overlooking The Flower Market At Nice, Gide On The Seventeenth-century Quais Of Toulon, Lorca In Granada, Picasso By Saint-germain-des-prés: There Lies Civilization And For Me It Can Exist Only Under Those Liberal Regimes In Which The Present Is Alive And Therefore Capable Of Assimilating The Past.

In The Dream Of Approaching Forty I Saw Myself As About To Die And Realized That I Was No Longer Myself, But A Creature Inhabited Entirely By Parasites, As A Caterpillar Is Occupied By The Grubs Of The Ichneumon Fly. Gin, Whisky, Sloth, Fear, Guilt, Tobacco, Had Made Themselves My Inquilines; Alcohol Sloshed About Within, While Tendrils Of Melon And Vine Grew Out Of Ears And Nostrils; My Mind Was A Worn Gramophone Record, My True Self Was Such A Ruin As To Seem Non-existent, And All This Had Happened In The Last Three Years.

The Disasters Of The World Are Due To Its Inhabitants Not Being Able To Grow Old Simultaneously. There Is Always A Raw And Intolerant Nation Eager To Destroy The Tolerant And Mellow.

A Lazy Person, Whatever The Talents With Which He Set Out, Will Have Condemned Himself To Second-hand Thoughts And To Second-rate Friends.

There Is No Suicide For Which All Society Is Not Responsible.