Everyone Tarrou set eyes on had that vacant gaze, and was visibly suffering from the complete break with all that life had meant t...o him. And since they could not be thinking of their death all the time, they thought of nothing... "For really to think about someone means thinking about that person every minute of the day, without letting one's thoughts be diverted by anything; by meals, by a fly that settles on someone's cheek, by household duties, or by a sudden itch somewhere. But there are always flies and itches. That's why life is difficult to live."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If we have largely forgotten the physical discomforts of the itching, oppressive garments of the past ... then we have mercifully ...forgotten, too, the smells of the past, the domestic odours--ill-washed flesh; infrequently changed underwear; chamber-pots; slop-pails; inadequately plumbed privies; rotting food; unattended teeth; and the streets are no fresher than indoors, the omnipresent acridity of horse piss and dung, drains, the sudden stench of old death from butchers' shops, the amniotic horror of the fishmonger.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We praise Him, we bless Him, we adore Him, we glorify Him, and we wonder who is that baritone across the aisle and that pretty wom...an on our right who smells of apple blossoms. Our bowels stir and our cod itches and we amend our prayers for the spiritual life with the hope that it will not be too spiritual.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »