Quote

People aim for the stars, and they end up like goldfish in a bowl. I wonder if it wouldn't be simpler just to teach children right from the start that life is absurd.

Muriel Barbery

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Muriel Barbery
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: May 28
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Anfa
Stars
Simpler
Start
Bowl
Ends
Bowls
Right
Absurd
Children
Aim
Life
Wouldn
Like
Wonder
People
Teach
Goldfish

More quotes by Muriel Barbery

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When tea becomes ritual, it takes place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things.
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If you want to heal Heal others And smile or weep At this very happy reversal of fate
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It would be so much better if we could share our insecurity, if we could all venture inside ourselves and realize that green beans and vitamin C, however much they nurture us, cannot save lives, or sustain our souls.
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Maybe that's what being alive is about: so we can track down those movments that are dying.
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Tasting is an act of pleasure and writing about that pleasure is an artistic gesture, but the only true work of art, in the end, is another person's feast.
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I find this a fascinating phenomenon: the ability we have to manipulate ourselves so that the foundation of our beliefs is never shaken.
Muriel Barbery
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We don't recognize each other because other people have become our permanent mirrors. If we actually realized this, if we were able to become aware of the fact that we are only ever looking at ourselves in the other person, that we are alone in the wilderness, we would go crazy.
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To beauty, all is forgiven, even vulgarity. Intelligence no longer seems an adequate compensation for things.
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... they have never seen you ... I would recognize you anywhere.
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A man who farts in bed . . . is a man who loves life.
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The real ordeal is not leaving those you love but learning to live without those who don't love you.
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They didn't recognize me, I repeat. He stops in turn, my hand still on his arm. It is because they have never seen you, he says. I would recognize you anywhere.
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With the exception of love, friendship and the beauty of Art, I don't see much else that can nurture human life.
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Melancholy overwhelms me at supersonic speed.
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Most people, when they move, well they just move depending on whatever's around them. At this very moment, as I am writing, Constitution the cat is going by with her tummy dragging close to the floor. This cat has absolutely nothing constructive to do in life and still she is heading toward something, probably an armchair.
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Pastries . . . can only be appreciated to the full extent of their subtlety when they are not eaten to assuage our hunger, when the orgy of their sugary sweetness is not destined to full some primary need but to coat our palate with all the benevolence of the world.
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To be poor, ugly and, moreover, intelligent condemns one in our society to a dark and disillusioned life...to beauty all is forgiven.
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I may know that the world is an ugly place, I still don't want to see it.
Muriel Barbery
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We think we can make honey without sharing in the fate of bees, but we are in truth nothing but poor bees, destined to accomplish our task and then die.
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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.
Muriel Barbery