Already, he was dreaming of a refined solitude, a comfortable desert, a motionless ark in which to seek refuge from the unending deluge of human stupidity.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a desire to escape from the chaos of human behavior and seek peace in solitude.
In this quote, Joris-Karl Huysmans articulates a yearning for isolation as a refuge from the overwhelming ignorance and folly of humanity. By depicting this 'refined solitude' as a 'comfortable desert,' he emphasizes a profound disconnection from the societal noise, valuing introspection and calm over the tumult of human interaction.
In practice
During a motivational speech about mental health, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of personal time away from the chaos of daily life.
At a period when Literature was wont to attribute the grief of living exclusively to the mischances of disappointed love or the jealousy of adulterous deceptions, he had said not a word of these childish maladies, but had sounded those more incurable, more poignant and more profound: wounds that are inflicted by satiety, disillusion and contempt in ruined souls tortured by the present, disgusted with the past, terrified and desperate of the future.
His contempt for humanity grew fiercer, and at last he came to realize that the world is made up mostly of fools and scoundrels. It became perfectly clear to him that he could entertain no hope of finding in someone else the same aspirations and antipathies; no hope of linking up with a mind which, like his own, took pleasure in a life of studious decrepitude; no hope of associating an intelligence as sharp and wayward as his own with any author or scholar.
I say no body of men are fit to make Presidents, judges and generals, unless they themselves supply the best specimens of the same; and that supplying one or two such specimens illuminates the whole body for a thousand years.
I saw in the whole Christian world a license of fighting at which even barbarous nations might blush. Wars were begun on trifling pretexts or none at all, and carried on without any reference of law, Divine or human.
The emotional reaction in the peak experience has a special flavor of wonder, of awe, of reverence, of humility and surrender before the experience as before something great.
Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!
The rich get richer and the poor get - children.
Well, think of what I’m doing to you right now. For me I’m the self, and you’re the object. For you, of course, it’s the exact opposite—you’re the self to you and I’m the object. And by exchanging self and object, we can project ourselves onto the other and gain self-consciousness. Volitionally.” “I still don’t get it, but it sure feels good.” “That’s the whole idea,” the girl said.
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