The real ordeal is not leaving those you love but learning to live without those who don't love you. Muriel Barbery More Quotes by Muriel Barbery More Quotes From Muriel Barbery As always, I am saved by the inability of living creatures to believe anything that might cause the walls of their little mental assumptions to crumble. Muriel Barbery inability wall believe We can be friends. We can be anything we want to be. Muriel Barbery want ...I am an anomaly in the system, living proof of how grotesque it is, and every day I mock it gently, deep within my impenetrable self. Muriel Barbery proof anomalies self What is an aristocrat? A woman who is never sullied by vulgarity, although she may be surrounded by it. Muriel Barbery vulgarity may Sashimi is velvet dust, verging on silk, or a bit of both, and the extraordinary alchemy of its gossamer essence allows it to preserve a milky density unknown even by clouds.... my cheeks recalled the effects of its profound caress. Muriel Barbery dust essence clouds If you want to heal Heal others And smile or weep At this very happy reversal of fate Muriel Barbery fate heal want There's so much humanity in a love of trees, so much nostalgia for our first sense of wonder, so much power in just feeling our own insignificance when we are surrounded by nature...yes, that's it: just thinking about trees and their indifferent majesty and our love for them teaches us how ridiculous we are - vile parasites squirming on the surface of the earth - and at the same time how deserving of life we can be, when we can honor this beauty that owes us nothing. Muriel Barbery feelings tree thinking 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 our-world garden different To beauty, all is forgiven, even vulgarity. Intelligence no longer seems an adequate compensation for things. Muriel Barbery vulgarity forgiven adequate When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things. Where is beauty to be found? In great things that, like everything else, are doomed to die, or in small things that aspire to nothing, yet know how to set a jewel of infinity in a single moment? Muriel Barbery greatness jewels heart I know that they're all unhappy because nobody loves the right person the way they should and because they don't understand that it's really their own self that they're mad at. Muriel Barbery mad unhappy self Moments like this act as magical interludes, placing our hearts at the edge of our souls: fleetingly, yet intensely, a fragment of eternity has come to enrich time...When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things. Muriel Barbery greatness soul heart This pause in time, within time ... When did I first experience the exquisite sense of surrender that is only possible with another person? The peace of mind one experiences on one's own, one's certainty of self in the serenity of solitude, are nothing in comparison to the release and openness and fluency one shares with another, in close companionship. Muriel Barbery serenity solitude self What is writing, no matter how lavish the pieces, if it says nothing of the truth, cares little for the heart, and is merely subservient to the pleasure of showing one's brilliance. Muriel Barbery pieces heart writing Pastries . . . can only be appreciated to the full extent of their subtlety when they are not eaten to assuage our hunger, when the orgy of their sugary sweetness is not destined to full some primary need but to coat our palate with all the benevolence of the world. Muriel Barbery coats world needs I won't get any better by punishing the people I can't heal. Muriel Barbery i-can heal people I have read so many books. And yet, like most Autodidacts, I am never quite sure of what I have gained from them. There are days when I feel I have been able to grasp all there is know in one single gaze, as if invisible branches suddenly spring out of no where, weaving together all the disparate strands of my reading. And then suddenly the meaning escapes, the essence evaporates and no matter how often I reread the same lines they seem to flee ever further with each subsequent reading and I see myself as some mad old fool who thinks her stomach is full because she's been reading the menu. Muriel Barbery reading spring book Because beauty consists of its own passing, just as we reach for it. It's the ephemeral configuration of things in the moment, when you can see both their beauty and their death. Muriel Barbery ephemeral movement moments As far as I can see, only psychoanalysis can compete with Christians in their love of drawn-out suffering. Muriel Barbery psychoanalysis suffering christian Madame Michel has the elegance of the hedgehog: on the outside she is covered in quills, a real fortress, but my gut feeling is that on the inside, she has the same simple refinement as the hedgehog: a deceptively indolent little creature, fiercely solitary--and terrible elegant. Muriel Barbery real simple feelings
