Blow the candle out, I don't need to see what my thoughts look like.
Interpretation
This quote reflects a desire to avoid confronting one's thoughts and the chaos they may bring.
Emile Zola's quote suggests that sometimes it is better to avoid introspection and the potential turmoil that can arise from examining our thoughts. The act of blowing out the candle symbolizes a desire to remain in the dark rather than face the illuminated complexities and harsh realities of one's own mind.
In practice
During a meditation retreat, someone might use this quote to explain the struggle with their inner thoughts.
I believe that all is illusion and vanity outside the treasure of truths slowly accumulated, and which will never again be lost. I believe that the sum of these truths, always increasing, will at last confer on man incalculable power and peace, if not happiness. Yes, I believe in the final triumph of life.
A ruined man fell from her hands like a ripe fruit, to lie rotting on the ground.
Oh, the fools, like a lot of good little schoolboys, scared to death of anything they've been taught is wrong!
Did not one spend the first half of one's days in dreams of happiness and the second half in regrets and terrors?
They dared not peer down into their own natures, down into the feverish confusion that filled their minds with a kind of dense, acrid mist.
If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud.
Since psyche and matter are contained in one and the same world, and moreover are in continuous contact with one another and ultimately rest on irrepresentable, transcendental factors, it is not only possible but fairly probable, even, that psyche and matter are two different aspects of the same thing.
The childhood shows the man, as morning shows the day.
I believe in nothing that I cannot touch, kiss, embrace.... The rest is only hearsay.
Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.
Written language must be considered as a particular psychic reality. The book is permanent; it is an object in your field of vision. It speaks to you with a monotonous authority which even its author would not have. You are fairly obliged to read what is written.
The world outside existed in a kind of darkness; and we inquired about nothing.
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