Читать книгу Anthology of Black Humor - André Breton - Страница 22

I’ve studied hypochondria, and how greatly this study has pleased me!—To tell the truth, my hypochondria is a special talent that consists in this: knowing how to draw from any incident in life, no matter what it might be called, the greatest quantity of poison for my personal use.

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It is not the force of his mind, but the force of the wind that has carried that man so far.

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He was one of those who want to do everything better than you ask them to. This is a frightful quality in a servant. [§]

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The highest level that can be reached by a mediocre but experienced mind is a talent for uncovering the weaknesses of those greater than itself.

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If you want to see what man can do if he wanted to, you have only to think of those who have broken out of prison or tried to break out. They have done as much with a single nail as they could have with a battering ram. [§]

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Man loves company, even if it is only that of a smoldering candle. [§]

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There are people who can make no decision before having a chance to sleep on it. That’s all very well; but there might be cases where one risks becoming a prisoner, along with one’s bedclothes.

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When we are young we scarcely know we are alive. We acquire the feeling of health only through sickness. That the earth draws us toward it becomes apparent when we jump into the air through the blow we receive on falling. When age sets in, the state of being sick becomes a species of health and we no longer notice we are sick. If recollection of the past did not stay with us we would notice little of the change. I therefore also believe that animals grow old only from our point of view of them. A squirrel which on the day of its death leads the life of an oyster is no more unhappy than the oyster. Man, however, who lives in three places—in the past, in the present, and in the future—can be unhappy if one of these three is worthless. Religion has even added a fourth—eternity. [§]

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Out of an exaggerated care to avoid a disaster you do precisely that which brings one down upon you, whereas if you had done nothing you would certainly have been safe: this is one of the most annoying of situations to be in. For in addition to the unpleasantness of the thing itself, you have also the mortification of self-reproach and of having made yourself ludicrous in the eyes of others. I have seen someone smash a valuable vase by trying to move it from where it had been standing quietly for at least six months simply because he was afraid it might one day be accidentally knocked over. [§]

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He had outgrown his library as one outgrows a waistcoat. Libraries can in general be too narrow or too wide for the soul. [§]

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Whereas everyone these days is writing for children, it would be a good idea to have, for once, a book written by children for adults. But this is no mean task, if one expects to remain in character.

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It would be an excellent thing to invent a catechism, or better still a course of study, by which members of the third estate could be metamorphosed into something like beavers. I know of no better animal in all creation: he bites only when attacked, is industrious, extremely matrimonial, a capable artisan, and his hide is excellent.

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The man was such an intellectual he was of almost no use. [§]

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If I know the genealogy of Dame Science, Ignorance is her older sister. Is it really so repulsive to choose the older sister, even if one has been offered the younger? From all those who have known the older, I have heard that she possesses many charms, that she is a fine, plump thing, and that, precisely because she is more often asleep than awake, she would make an excellent spouse.

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He made all his discoveries more or less the way wild boars and hunting dogs root out salt-water and mineral springs.

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The man was working on a system of natural history in which animals were classified by the shape of their excrements. He distinguished three classes: cylindrical, spheric, and pie-shaped.

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In my view this theory corresponds in psychology to a very celebrated one in physics that explains the northern lights as the phosphorescence of herrings. [§]

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Long live those who have nerves as thick as cables!

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He marvelled at the fact that cats had two holes cut in their fur at precisely the spot where their eyes were. [§]

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If you paint a bull’s-eye on your garden gate, you can be sure that someone will take a shot at it.

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A. Why don’t you help your father?—B. How do you mean?—A. He’s quite poor.—B. Yes, but he’s a hard worker, and I don’t have fortune enough to make him a do-nothing.

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I once knew a miller’s boy who never removed his cap when he met me unless he had a donkey walking beside him. For a long time I could not explain it. At length I discovered that he regarded this company as a humiliation and was pleading for compassion; by removing his cap he seemed to want to evade the slightest comparison between himself and his companion. [§]

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“Many are less fortunate than you” may not be a roof to live under, but it will serve to retire beneath in the event of a shower. [§]

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I have long thought that philosophy will eventually consume itself. Metaphysics has already done so to some extent.

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He had given names to his two slippers.

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I would give something to know for precisely whom the deeds were really done, of which it is publicly stated they were done for the Fatherland. [§]

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Gallows with lightning rod.

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Autobiography: Not to be forgotten: that I once wrote down the question What are the northern lights? and left it in Graupner’s garret addressed to an angel, and next morning crept quietly back to collect the note. Oh, if only there had been some little rascal to reply to that note! [§]

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Once while on a journey I was eating at an inn, or rather a roadside shack, where they were playing dice. Sitting across from me was a fresh-faced young man who seemed a bit dissipated and who, without paying any attention to the people around him, whether seated or standing, was eating his soup; nonetheless, he tossed every second or third spoonful into the air, caught it again in his spoon, and swallowed it calmly.

What I find so singular about this dream is that it inspired my habitual remark: that such things cannot be invented, only seen (by which I mean that no novelist would ever have come up with the idea); and yet I had just invented it myself.

At the table where they were playing dice, a tall, thin woman sat knitting. I asked her what could be won at this game, and she answered: Nothing! When I asked her whether anything could be lost, she said: No! The game struck me as very important (February 1799).

—from Aphorisms translations marked [§] by R. J. Hollingdale