"There's no tyrant like a brain" - the world according to Louis-Ferdinand Céline

All quotes from Journey to the End of the Night:

"An unfamiliar city is a fine thing. That's the time and place when you can suppose that all the people you meet are nice. It's dream time. "

"Lots of men are like that, their artistic leanings never go beyond a weakness for shapely thighs."

"If you aren't rich you should always look useful."

"This instinctive repulsion which tradespeople inspire in men of sensitive feeling is one of the very rare consolations for being so impoverished which are given to those of us who don’t sell anything to anybody."

"There's no tyrant like a brain. "

"That is perhaps what we seek throughout life, that and nothing more, the greatest possible sorrow so as to become fully ourselves before dying."

"I warn you that when the princes of this world start loving you it means they are going to grind you up into battle sausage."

"There is no rest for the humble except in despising the great, whose only thought of the people is inspired by self-interest or sadism."

"When men can hate without risk, their stupidity is easily convinced, the motives supply themselves."

"We've no use for intellectuals in this outfit. What we need is chimpanzees. Let me give you a word of advice: never say a word to us about being intelligent. We will think for you, my friend. Don't forget it."

"A God who counts minutes and pennies, a desperate sensual God, who grunts like a pig. A pig with golden wings, who falls and falls, always belly side up, ready for caresses, that’s him, our master. Come, kiss me."

"In the kitchens of love, after all, vice is like the pepper in a good sauce; it brings out the flavor, it’s indispensable."

"Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn't enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I've never been able to kill myself."

"Love is the infinite placed within the reach of poodles. I have my dignity!"

"Love is like liquor, the drunker and more impotent you are, the stronger and smarter you think yourself and the surer you are of your rights."

"When it becomes really impossible to get away and sleep, then the will to live evaporates of its own accord."

"The sadness of the world has different ways of getting to people, but it seems to succeed almost every time."

"You know about innards? The trick they play on tramps in the country? They stuff an old wallet with putrid chicken innards. Well, take it from me, a man is just like that, except that he's fatter and hungrier and can move around, and inside there's a dream."

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