Poor people never, or hardly ever, ask for an explanation of all they have to put up with. They hate one another, and content themselves with that.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the destructive nature of poverty, highlighting how it breeds resentment among those who suffer from it.
Louis-Ferdinand Celine's quote critiques the social dynamics within impoverished communities, suggesting that rather than seeking to understand their suffering or to unite against their plight, the poor often turn against each other. This internal conflict is portrayed as a coping mechanism, where animosity replaces the need for addressing structural issues, thereby perpetuating a cycle of despair and discontent among those affected by poverty.
In practice
In a discussion about societal issues, this quote could be used to illustrate the complexities of poverty and interpersonal relations.
Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn't enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I've never been able to kill myself.
To travel is very useful, it makes the imagination work, the rest is just delusion and pain. Our journey is entirely imaginary, which is its strength.
In the kitchens of love, after all, vice is like the pepper in a good sauce; it brings out the flavor, it’s indispensable.
Truth is a pain which will not stop. And the truth of this world is to die. You must choose: either dying or lying. Personally, I have never been able to kill myself
Reason died in 1914, November 1914 ... after that everybody began to rave.
To hell with reality! I want to die in music, not in reason or in prose. People don't deserve the restraint we show by not going into delirium in front of them. To hell with them!
I know how young black men are seen. They're boys - scared little boys, oftentimes. I was one of them. I was completely afraid of the Los Angeles Police Department.
Envy will merit, as its shade, pursue
Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.
And none will hear the postman’s knock Without a quickening of the heart. For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
Liberty of thought is the life of the soul.
Every man who has lived for fifty years has buried a whole world or even two; he has grown used to its disappearance and accustomed to the new scenery of another act: but suddenly the names and faces of a time long dead appear more and more often on his way, calling up series of shades and pictures kept somewhere, "just in case," in the endless catacombs of the memory, making him smile or sigh, and sometimes almost weep.
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