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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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Muriel Barbery
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: May 28
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Anfa
Belief
Ability
Find
Shaken
Never
Manipulate
Phenomenon
Fascinating
Beliefs
Foundation

More quotes by 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.
Muriel Barbery
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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.
Muriel Barbery
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We never look beyond our assumptions and what's worse, we have given up trying to meet others we just meet ourselves.
Muriel Barbery
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If you want to heal Heal others And smile or weep At this very happy reversal of fate
Muriel Barbery
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Personally I think that grammar is a way to attain beauty.
Muriel Barbery
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...we have to surpass ourselves every day, make every day undying. Climb our own personal Everest and do it in such a way that every step is a little bit of eternity. That's what the future is for: to build the present, with real plans, made by living people.
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.
Muriel Barbery
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Civilization is the mastery of violence, the triumph, constantly challenged, over the aggressive nature of the primate. For primates we have been and primates we shall remain, however often we learn to find joy in a camellia on moss. This is the very purpose of education.
Muriel Barbery
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To beauty, all is forgiven, even vulgarity. Intelligence no longer seems an adequate compensation for things.
Muriel Barbery
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Maybe that's what being alive is about: so we can track down those movments that are dying.
Muriel Barbery
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..if you dread tomorrow, it's because you don't know how to build the present, you tell yourself you can deal with it tomorrow, and it's a lost cause anyway because tomorrow always ends up becoming today, don't you see?
Muriel Barbery
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The strong ones among humans do nothing. They talk and talk again.
Muriel Barbery
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If, in our world, there is any chance of becoming the person you haven't yet become...will I know how to seize that chance, turn my life into a garden that will be completely different from my forebears'?
Muriel Barbery
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. . . maybe that's what life's all about: there's a lof of despair, but also the odd moments of beauty, where time is no longer the same . . . [like] something suspended . . . an elsewhere . . . an always within a never. Yes, that's is, an always within a never.
Muriel Barbery
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We can be friends. We can be anything we want to be.
Muriel Barbery
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The real ordeal is not leaving those you love but learning to live without those who don't love you.
Muriel Barbery
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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.
Muriel Barbery
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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.
Muriel Barbery
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People think that children don't know anything. It's enough to make you wonder if grownups were ever children once upon a time.
Muriel Barbery
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Poverty is a reaper: it harvests everything inside us that might have made us capable of social intercourse with others, and leaves us empty, purged of feeling, so that we may endure all the darkness of the present day.
Muriel Barbery