Marcel Schwob Quotes & Sayings

There is no science for the teguments of a leaf, for the filaments of a cell structure, the winding of a vein, the passion of a habit, or for the twists and quirks of character. — Marcel Schwob

This house could have been a prison or a hospital, but a prison where they locked up the innocent to prevent them from suffering, or a hospital where one goes to recover from the labor of life. And Monelle was both the jailer and the nurse. — Marcel Schwob

Look: each moment is a cradle and a casket: may all life and all death seem strange to you. — Marcel Schwob

Say not: I live today, I shall die tomorrow. Divide not reality between life and death. Say: now I live and die. — Marcel Schwob

It was at this time that people found along the roads and highways little children, tiny vagabonds who refused to grow up. Little girls of seven years knelt and prayed that they might not grow older, for puberty seemed to them a sign of mortality. — Marcel Schwob

Unlike most biographers it is here I leave Messrs. Burke and Hare, at the peak of their glory. Why destroy such an artistic effect by requiring them to languish along to the end of their lives, revealing their defects and their deceptions? We need only remember them, mask in hand, walking abroad on foggy nights. For their end was sordid like so many others. One of them, it appears, was hanged and Dr. Knox was forced to quit Edinburgh. Mr. Burke left no other works. — Marcel Schwob

Behold the word: Destroy, destroy, destroy. Destroy within yourself; destroy what surrounds you. Make space for your soul and for all other souls.

Destroy all good and all evil. Their ruins are the same.

Destroy the old dwellings of man and old the dwellings of the soul; what is dead is a distorting mirror.

Destroy, for all creation comes from destruction.

And for higher benevolence you must annihilate lower benevolence. And thus new good appears saturated with evil. — Marcel Schwob

With your left foot you shall wipe out the footprint of your right foot. — Marcel Schwob

Do not be surprised,' she said. 'It is I, and it is not I; You shall find me again, and you shall lose me; Once more shall I come among you; for few men have seen me, and none has understood me; And you shall forget me, and you shall recognize me, and you shall forget me. — Marcel Schwob

As masks are the sign that there are faces, words are the sign that there are things. And these things are the sign of the incomprehensible. — Marcel Schwob

Monelle grew quiet and looked at me: I came from the night, she said, and I shall return to the night. For I too am a young prostitute. — Marcel Schwob