Words From The French Weasel

I recently finished reading The Words, an autobiography by Jean-Paul Sartre, the French Existentialist philosopher. I would like to point out that Mr. Sartre admitted that he did not believe in God, at least at the time of the writing of this book in 1964. There is no real evidence in his autobiography that he ever believed. The following are some quotes that I have selected for your education and enjoyment. I have even added some personal commentary on a few of them.

"Dying isn't everything: one must die in time."

"Truth flows from the mouth of babes and sucklings."

"I have no rights, since love heaps blessings upon me; I have no duties, since I give out of love."

"Whatever their poverty, they will never suffer as much as my grandfather did: when he was little, he would get up before dawn and dress in the dark; in winter, he had to break the ice in the water jug in order to wash." (Sartre's grandfather was Charles Schweitzer, the brother of the famed liberal theologian, Albert Schweitzer.)

"I never tilled the soil or hunted for nests. I did not gather herbs or throw stones at birds. But books were my birds and my nests, my household pets, my barn and my countryside. The library was the world caught in a mirror. It had the world's infinite thickness, its variety." (As a kid, his whole world was books. He began early by just looking at the words. It wasn't long before he was reading, much sooner than his friends. By age 8, he was already filling notebooks with his own novels. I do respect his love for books though. Libraries are great. I seem to be amassing my own.)

"In our bustling societies, delays sometimes give a head start." (We could all benefit from slowing down. I mean seriously, everything has to be instant these days. In the old days, letters were written and there was plenty of time for thinking in order to give a response. Now, with email and instant messaging, responses are expected right away. People want answers now, and not a second later.)

"The tribulations of my friends convinced me that I was their equal." (We all suffer. We call have troubles. Jesus said that in this world we would have troubles, but we should cheer up because He has overcome this world.)

"All children are inspired; they have nothing to envy poets, who are just children."

"Even now I still have that minor vice, familiarity."

"God would have managed things for me. I would have been signed a masterpiece. Assured of playing my part in the universal concert, I would have patiently waited for Him to reveal His purposes and my necessity. I reached out for religion, I longed for it, it was remedy. Had it been denied me, I would have invented it myself. It was not denied me. Raised in the Catholic faith, I learned that the Almighty had made me for His glory. That was more than I dared dream. But later, I did not recognize in the fashionable God in whom I was taught to believe the one whom my soul was awaiting. I needed a Creator; I was given a Big Boss. The two were one and the same, but I did not realize it. I was serving, without zeal, the Idol of the Pharisees, and the official doctrine put me off seeking my own faith. What luck! Confidence and sorrow made my soul a choice soil for sowing the seeds of heaven. Were it not for that mistake, I would now be a monk. But my family had been affected by the slow movement of dechristianization that started among the Voltairian upper bourgeoisie and took a century to spread to all levels of society. Without that general weakening of faith, Louise Guillemin, a Catholic young lady from the provinces, would have made a show of greater reluctance to marry a Lutheran. Of course, our whole family believed in God, as a matter of discretion. Seven or eight years after the Combes cabinet, declared disbelief had the violence and raucousness of passion. An atheist was a 'character,' a wildman whom one did not invite to dinner lest he 'lash out,' a fanatic encumbered with taboos who refused the right to kneel in church, to weep sweetly there, to give his daughters a religious wedding, who took it upon himself to prove the truth of his doctrine by the purity of his morals, who hounded himself and his happiness to the point of depriving himself of the means of dying comforted, a God-obsessed crank who saw His absence everywhere and who could not open his mouth without uttering His name; in short, a gentleman who had religious convictions. The believer had none." (Legalists, let this be a warning to you! Christians, how are you going to fair against the raging storm of our culture? I also find Sartre's ironies of the atheist to be quite humorous.)

"Another me, my grim brother, would languidly challenge all the articles of faith. I was a Catholic and a Protestant; I united the critical spirit and the spirit of submission. At bottom, the whole business bored me. I was led to disbelief not by the conflict of dogmas, but by my grandparents' indifference." ("Now, we must all fear evil men. But there is another kind of evil...which we must fear most, and that is the indifference...of good men!")

"Whenever anyone speaks to me about God today, I say, with the easy amusement of an old beau who meets a former belle: 'Fifty years ago, had it not been for that misunderstanding, that mistake, the accident that separated us, there might have been something between us.'" (That's really sad...what a pity!)

"Suddenly there was an opportunity to shine: 'What is your fondest wish?' I replied without hesitation: 'To be a soldier and avenge the dead.'" (Jean-Paul was so bad that the French army kicked him out in a time of war. Not that's pathetic!)

"I was seven and knew how to read; it was twelve and did not know how to talk." (Here he is referring to movies, which were still silent in those days.)

"One speaks in one's own language, one writes in a foreign language."

"Wanting to be a hero is not enough. Neither courage nor the gift suffices; there must be hydras and dragons." (There must be a testing to see what you are made of.)

"As a rhetorician, I cared only for words: I would set up cathedrals of words beneath the blue eyes of the word sky."

"My grandfather thought I was tiny, and he was upset about it. 'He'll be short, like the Sartres,' my grandmother would say, just to annoy him. He would pretend not to hear, he would stand in front of me and look me up and down: 'He's growing!' he would say, without much conviction. I shared neither his anxieties nor his hopes: weeds also grow, which was proof that one could become tall and still be bad." (I found Sartre's comment to be funny!)

"I was often told that the past drives us forward, but I was convinced that I was being drawn by the future."

"As for me, I don't hold grudges and I obligingly admit everything; I'm always ready to criticize myself, provided I'm not forced to." (I don't like to be forced to do things either. I prefer to do things out of love and commitment. I love to read, but when school forces me to read something, it just isn't enjoyable.)