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 »
I thus could not live, and I admitted it, unless on the entire earth, all creatures, or at least the greatest number, were turned ...toward me, eternally vacant, deprived of an independent life, ready at any moment to respond to my call, given to sterility until the day I deigned to grace them with my light. In short, for me to live happily, it was necessary for those chosen by me not to live at all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark, The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,... The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters, The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers, Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees, Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Time, which shows so vacant, indivisible, and divine in its coming, is slit and peddled into trifles and tatters. A door is to be ...painted, a lock to be repaired. I want wood, or oil, or meal, or salt; the house smokes, or I have a headache; then the tax; and an affair to be transacted with a man without heart or brains; and the stinging recollection of an injurious or very awkward word,--these eat up the hours.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is the ignorant and childish part of mankind that is the fighting part. Idle and vacant minds want excitement, as all boys kill... cats.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I fairly confess that, acting as nature and simplicity dictated, no sooner did I see the once loved bosom of my Ferdinand free fro...m those deformed demons which had crept in and filled up the vacant space, than beholding my natural home once more the seat of innocence and truth, my heart joyfully danced into its delightful abode.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »