Quotes from Pascal Bruckner

To happiness in the strict sense, we may prefer pleasure, as a brief moment of ecstasy stolen in the course of things, gaiety, the lighthearted drunkenness that accompanies life's development, and especially joy, which presupposes surprise and elation. For nothing can compete with the irruption in our lives of an event or a being that ravages and ravishes us. There is always too much to desire, to discover, to love. And we leave the stage having hardly tasted the feast.

Self-denigration is all too clearly a form of indirect self-glorification.

The 'destiny that eyes us from the future' makes us neglect our duties to those close to us. Third-Worldism stressed the crimes of colonialism in order to avoid speaking about the crimes of the decolonized; ecologists, wholly absorbed in their science-fiction ethics, care more about our possible misdeeds than about present injustices.

We now have every right except the right not to be blissful.

de acum înainte avem toate drepturile, mai puÅ£in acela de a nu fi fericiÅ£i.

Em definitivo, nós somos tão donos do clima como de nós mesmos e deciframos o céu com a mesma perplexidade que os movimentos do nosso coração. Quanto à analogia feita entre a atmosfera e o humor, ela não é segura: um sol esplendoroso pode-nos ferir com a sua exuberância, a neve e o nevoeiro podem-nos mergulhar num júbilo perene.

Avec l'argent, nul n'est à l'aise : ceux qui croient le détester l'idolâtrent en secret. Ceux qui l'idolâtrent le surestiment. Ceux qui feignent de le mépriser se mentent à eux-mêmes. Engouement

Si l'argent ne fait pas le bonheur, rendez-le ! » JULES RENARD

In the eighteenth century, historians tell us, 'valentinage,' from which Valentine's Day was derived, allowed wives in northern France to make love, on a few days each year and with the knowledge of their husbands, with a 'valentine' of their choosing.

As good heirs of the Bible, we think that a great misfortune necessarily follows a great infraction. In this respect the intellectual caste, in our world, is the penitential class par excellence, continuing the role of the clergy under the Old Regime. We have to call its members what they are: officials of original sin.

un ruido sin ruido hecho de mil murmullos indistintos.

Le pire, c'est de rater la merveille par peur ou paresse et de rester claquemuré en soi, dans le provincialisme de son identité.

le vrai bourgeois, de nos jours, est celui qui méprise sa propre classe, joue au rebelle et tire gloire de s'autodéprécier en permanence. La

Sunt gata sa dau totul cui nu cere nimic, dar nu vreau sa cedez nimic cui asteapta totul de la celalalt.

Cu cat traiesti mai putin, cu atat ai mai putin chef sa traiesti.

The Western cult of happiness is indeed a strange adventure, something like a collective intoxication. In the guise of emancipation, it transforms a high ideal into its opposite. Condemned to joy, we must be happy or lose all standing in society. It is not a question of knowing whether we are more or less happy than our ancestors; our conception of the thing itself has changed, and we are probably the first society in history to make people unhappy for not being happy.

Uno se enfrenta a la peor prueba que existe: uno mismo. He conocido a muchos bravucones que se desinflaban llegado el momento.

A infelicidade não é só a infelicidade: é, ainda pior, o fracasso da felicidade.

The average European, whether male or female, is extremely sensitive, always ready to shoulder the blame for the poverty of Africa or Asia, to sorrow over the world's problems, to assume responsibility for them, always ready to ask what Europeans can do for the South rather than asking what the South could do for itself.

A whole intellectual intercourse is established: clerks are appointed to maintain it like the ancient guardians of the sacred flame and issue permits to think and speak.

We are not afraid of death," the suicide bombers say to show their superiority to ordinary people. But they are afraid of life, constantly trampling on it, slandering it, destroying it, and training children still in their cradles for martyrdom.

However, its ultimate motivation is fanatics' hostility to the principle of an open society in which formal equality is recognized for everyone.

Where there are no visible conflicts, there is no freedom," Montesquieu said.

However, its ultimate motivation is fanatics' hostility to the principle of an open society in which formal equality is recognized for everyone. It is our existence as such that is intolerable for them.