The despondency that follows makes me feel somewhat like a shipwrecked man who spies a sail, sees himself saved, and suddenly remembers that the lens of his spyglass has a flaw, a blurred spot -- the sail he has seen.
Jean GenetRead
It's a true image, born of a false spectacle.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that reality is often obscured by illusions or façades.
Jean Genet's quote reflects the idea that what we perceive as true or real can often be influenced by deceptive appearances. It implies that genuine understanding or insight can emerge even from misleading or artificial situations, encouraging a deeper exploration of reality beyond superficial judgments.
Themes
RealityIllusionPerceptionTruthAppearance
In practice
Example use cases
In a philosophical discussion about the nature of truth.
More from Jean Genet
All quotes →Erotic play discloses a nameless world which is revealed by the nocturnal language of lovers. Such language is not written down. It is whispered into the ear at night in a hoarse voice. At dawn it is forgotten.
Jean GenetRead
I'm homosexual. How and why are idle questions. It's a little like wanting to know why my eyes are green.
Jean GenetRead
I wanted to swallow myself by opening my mouth very wide and turning it over my head so that it would take in my whole body, and then the Universe, until all that would remain of me would be a ball of eaten thing which little by little would be annihilated: that is how I see the end of the world.
Jean GenetRead
I decided to be what crime made of me.
Jean GenetRead
Anyone who hasn't experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing about ecstasy at all.
Jean GenetRead
Similar quotes
Whatever the public blames you for, cultivate it; it is yourself.
Jean CocteauRead
That was interesting, to find that it wasn't hunger that caused children to become bullies on the street. The bulliness was already in the child, and whatever the stakes were, they would find a way to act as they needed to act. … Intelligence and education, which all these children had, apparently didn't make any important difference in human nature.
Orson Scott CardRead
I'm open to everything. When you start to criticize the times you live in, your time is over.
Karl LagerfeldRead
Our economic approach to food and its distribution reflects our basic moral values.
Nelson MandelaRead
Some of the homes that have been built in the last 10 years just appall me. Why do humans need huge homes? I was born poor and I didn’t know you bought clothes at anything but the Goodwill until I went to college. Some of our mentality about what it means to have a good life is, I think, not going to help us in the next 50 years. We have to think through how to choose a meaningful life where we’re helping one another in ways that really help the Earth.
Elinor OstromRead
... at the beginning of the human race the woman was made of a rib taken from the side of the man while he slept; for it seemed fit that even then Christ and His Church should be foreshadowed in this event. For that sleep of the man was the death of Christ, whose side, as He hung lifeless upon the Cross, was pierced with a spear, and there flowed from it blood and water, and these we know to be the sacraments by which the Church is built up.
Saint AugustineRead