The Little Virtues

We believe that we can always return to that secret moment of ours, that we can draw on the right words; but it isn’t true that we can always go back there, often our return there is false; we make our eyes glow with a false light, we pretend to be caring and warm towards our neighbour and we are in fact once more shrunken and hunched up in the icy darkness of our heart. Human relationships have to be rediscovered and reinvented every day.

They prefer money to things. It is not bad that they have suffered a disappointment; it is bad that they feel lonely without the company of money

And so as we don’t have authority we must invent another kind of relationship.

They deafened us with their thunderous words: a dialogue was impossible because as soon as they suspected that they were wrong they ordered us to be quiet: they beat their fists on the table and made the room shake.

they were illogical and incoherent but they never realised this; they constantly contradicted themselves but they never allowed anyone to contradict them

We are still shy. Only, it doesn’t matter; it seems that our claim to be shy has been conquered for us; we are shy without shyness, boldly shy.

we have lost every ability to think of ourselves or enjoy ourselves.

the strangest desires come to us, desires we would never have dreamed we could have when we walked through the city alone and free; we would like an umbrella-stand and a coatrack, towels, a camping oven, a refrigerator.

How strong and free our past was, when we walked alone at will through the city! We felt such pity for the families we saw

We did not know that there could be such fear, such frailty, in our body: we never suspected that we could feel so bound to life by a chain of fear, of such heart-rending tenderness