33+ Pascal Mercier Quotes On Education, Friendship And Philosophical

Pascal Mercier is a Swiss writer and philosopher. He is best known for his novel Night Train to Lisbon, which was adapted into a feature film in 2013. Mercier has also published several non-fiction books on philosophy and literature, as well as several collections of essays and short stories. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Pascal Mercier on education, love, friendship.

Top 10 Pascal Mercier Quotes

1. Given that we can live only a small part of what there is in us -- what happens with the rest?
2. We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there.
3. We are stratified creatures, creatures full of abysses, with a soul of inconstant quicksilver, with a mind whose color and shape change as in a kaleidoscope that is constantly shaken.
4. Loyalty... A will, a decision, a resolution of the soul.
5. But when we set out to understand somebody’s inside? Is that a trip that ever ends? Is the soul a place of facts? Or are the alleged facts only the deceptive shadows of our stories?
6. Kitsch is the most pernicious of all prisons. The bars are covered with the gold of simplistic, unreal feelings, so that you take them for the pillars of a palace.
7. Our lives are rivers, gliding free to that unfathomed, boundless sea, the silent grave!
8. [Vanity] is an unrecognised form of stupidity, you have to forget the cosmic meaninglessness of all our acts to be able to be vain and that's a glaring form of stupidity.
9. A feeling is no longer the same when it comes the second time. It dies through the awareness of its return. We become tired and weary of our feelings when they come too often and last too long.
10. Then there was a silence he had never before experienced: in it, you could hear the years.

Pascal Mercier Short Quotes

• Life is not what we live; it is what we imagine we are living.
• When dictatorship is a fact, revolution is a duty!
• It is not the pain and the wounds that are the worst. The worst is the humiliation.
• Isn't it true that it's not people who meet, but rather the shadows cast by their imaginations?
• To understand yourself: Is that a discovery or a creation?
• Human beings can't bear silence.It would mean that they would bear themselves.
• Sometimes, we are afraid of something because we're afraid of something else.

Pascal Mercier Famous Quotes And Sayings

It wasn't only that you didn't see him anymore, meet him anymore. You saw his absence and encountered it as something tangible. His not being there was like the sharply outlined emptiness of a photo with a figure cut out precisely with scissors and now the missing figure is more important, more dominant than all others. — Pascal Mercier

I would not like to live in a world without cathedrals. I need their beauty and grandeur. I need their imperious silence. I need it against the witless bellowing of the barracks yard and the witty chatter of the yes-men. I want to hear the rustling of the organ, this deluge of ethereal notes. I need it against the shrill farce of marches. — Pascal Mercier

To stand by yourself -- that was also part of dignity. That way, a person could get through a public flaying with dignity. Galileo. Luther. Even somebody who admitted his guilt and resisted the temptation to deny it. Something politicians couldn't do. Honesty, the courage for honesty. With others and yourself. — Pascal Mercier

In the years afterward, I fled whenever somebody began to understand me. That has subsided. But one thing remained: I don't want anybody to understand me completely. I want to go through life unknown. The blindness of others is my safety and my freedom. — Pascal Mercier

When we talk about ourselves, about others, or simply about things, we want- it could be said – to reveal ourselves in our words: We want to show what we think and feel. We let other have a glimpse into our soul. — Pascal Mercier

What did i know of your fantasies? Why do we know so little about the fantasies of our parents? What do we know of somebody if we know nothing of the images passed to him by his imagination? — Pascal Mercier

'De nada,' replied Gregorius. The Portuguese couple sat down, the train went on. Gregorius was never to forget this scene. They were his first Portuguese words in the real world and they worked. That words could cause something in the world, make someone move or stop, laugh or cry: even as a child he had found it extraordinary and it had never stopped impressing him. — Pascal Mercier

To live for the moment: it sounds so right and so beautiful. But the more I want to, the less I understand what it means. — Pascal Mercier

We are all patchwork, and so shapeless and diverse in composition that each bit, each moment, plays its own game. And there is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others — Pascal Mercier

We live here and now. Everything before and in other places is past. Mostly forgotten. What could, what should be done with all the time that lies ahead of us, open and unshaped, feather-light in its freedom and lead-heavy in its uncertainty? Is it a wish? Dream-like and nostalgic, to stand once again at that point in life and be able to take a completely different direction than the one that has made us who we are? — Pascal Mercier

That words could cause something in the world, make someone move or stop, laugh or cry: even as a child he had found it extraordinary and it never stopped impressing him. How did words do that? Wasn't it like magic? — Pascal Mercier

I love tunnels. They 're the symbol of hope: sometime it will be bright again. If by chance it is not night. — Pascal Mercier

What is it that we call loneliness. It can’t simply be the absence of others, you can be alone and not lonely, and you can be among people and yet be lonely. So what is it? — Pascal Mercier

There were people who read and there were the others. Whether you were the a reader or a non-reader was soon apparent. There was no greater distinction between people. — Pascal Mercier

I am still there, at that distant place in time, I never left it, but live expanded in the past, or out of it. — Pascal Mercier

So, the fear of death might be described as the fear of not being able to become whom one had planned to be. — Pascal Mercier

Life Lessons by Pascal Mercier

Pascal Mercier encourages us to think deeply about our lives and how we live them. He emphasizes the importance of being open to new experiences and ideas, and of questioning our assumptions. He also reminds us to take time to appreciate the beauty of the world around us and to savor the moments that make life worth living.