#825

The distance between young and old is the same today as it has always been.
Today people speak of the generation “gap” because today’s adult refuses to become old and the youth, with all due disrespect, assures him that he is old.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 151

#824

History is what is reconstructed by an imagination capable of thinking the consciousness of others.
The rest is politics.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 151

#823

It does not help the mediocre man at all to emigrate to where great men reside.
We all carry our mediocrity with us wherever we go.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 151

#822

Intelligence is strengthened by the eternal commonplaces. And it is weakened by those of its time and place.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 151

#821

Modern drudgery does not make it more difficult to believe in God, but it does make it impossible to feel Him.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 150

#820

Anybody has the right to be stupid, but not to demand that we revere his stupidity.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 150

#819

Obviously, in many cases we come up with our ideas, but we are not the first, nor the only ones, to come up with them.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 150

#818

The leftist intellectual does not attack anything with fearlessness and arrogance except ideas he believes to be dead.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 150

#817

To lighten the load of the Christian ship foundering in modern waters, liberal theology yesterday jettisoned the divinity of Christ, and radical theology today jettisons the existence of God.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 150

#816

Negative criticism sometimes achieves those conversions of the soul which significantly modify the problems.
“Constructive” criticism only multiplies catastrophes.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 150

#815

We frequently discover, after many years, that deliberate solutions end up being more intolerable than problems.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 150

#814

Visiting a museum or reading a classic are, for the contemporary masses, simple ethical requirements.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 149

#813

When a Catholic defends himself better against vices than against heresy, already there is only a little Christianity left in his head.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 149

#812

The only 18th-century writer to be revived by the admiration of our contemporaries is de Sade.
Visitors to a palace who admire nothing but the latrines.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 149

#811

Whoever merely resigns himself to his lot feels frustrated by a destiny without meaning.
Whoever humbly accepts it knows that he just does not understand the significance of the divine decision concerning him.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 149

#810

We disfigure duties and pleasures when we ignore the fact that each thing carries with it the criterion which convicts or acquits it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 149

#809

The historian’s greatest sin lies in viewing any age whatsoever as only an anticipation of, preparation for, or cause of another.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 145

#808

Those who ask the Church to adapt herself to modern thinking are in the habit of confusing the urgent need to respect certain methodological rules with the obligation to adopt a repertory of idiotic postulates.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 145

#807

True problems do not have a solution but a history.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 145

#806

Education consists not in cooperating in the free development of the individual, but in appealing to the decency we all possess against the perversity we all possess.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 145

#805

Man, until yesterday, did not deserve to be called a rational animal.
The definition was inexact as long as he invented, according to his preference, religious attitudes and ethical behavior, aesthetic tasks and philosophical meditations.
Today, on the other hand, man limits himself to being a rational animal, that is to say: an inventor of practical rules at the service of his animality.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 145

#804

Clergymen and journalists have smeared the term “love” with so much sentimentality that even its echo stinks.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 144

#803

Each individual calls “culture” the collection of things he regards with respectful boredom.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 144

#802

There are vices of a fallen archangel and there are vices of the simple, infernal crowd.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 144

#801

Castaways more readily forgive the imprudent pilot who sinks the “ship” than the intelligent passenger who predicts its drift towards the reef.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 144

#800

When the race of egoists absorbed in perfecting themselves dies out, nobody will be left to remind us that we have the duty to save our intelligence, even after we have lost all hope of saving our skin.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 144

#799

Modern man fears technology’s destructive capacity, when it is its constructive capacity that threatens him.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 144

#798

This century is turning out to be an interesting spectacle not for what it does, but for what it undoes.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 144

#797

Having promulgated the dogma of original innocence, democracy concludes that the man guilty of the crime is not the envious murderer but the victim who aroused his envy.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 143

#796

Human problems are neither exactly definable, nor remotely solvable.
He who expects Christianity to solve them has ceased to be a Christian.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 143

#795

“The dignity of man,” “the greatness of man,” “the rights of man,” etc.: a verbal hemorrhage which the simple sight of our face in the morning as we shave should staunch.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 143

#794

In order to licitly ridicule the spectacle of others’ ambitions, we are first required to strangle our own.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 143

#793

In ages like this, whoever has pride cannot humble himself before the “greatness of the times.”

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 143

#792

The interjection is the supreme tribunal of art.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 143

#791

Authentic intelligence spontaneously sees even the most humble fact of daily life in the light of the most general idea.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 142

#790

Nothing endures for certain and only instances count, but the instant reserves its splendor for someone who imagines it to be eternal.
The only thing that has value is the ephemeral which appears immortal.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 142

#789

The now secular task of “democratizing culture” has achieved the result not that more people admire, for example, Shakespeare or Racine, but that more people believe they admire them.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 142

#788

The cultural propaganda of the last decades (scholarly, journalistic, etc.) has not educated the public; it has merely obtained the result, like so many a missionary, that the natives celebrate their ceremonies in secret.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 142

#787

“Cultural activities” is an expression we hear not in the mouth of someone who spontaneously engages in them, but in the mouth of someone who performs them for profit or for prestige.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 142

#786

Life is a workshop of hierarchies.
Only death is democratic.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 142

#785

The technical excellence of intellectual work has reached such a point that libraries are bursting at the seams with books which we cannot disdain, but which are not worth the trouble to read.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 141

#784

The tragedy of the left? To diagnose the disease correctly, but to aggravate it with its therapy.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 141

#783

To democratize Christianity they have to falsify the texts, reading “equal” where they say “brother.”

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 141

#782

The revolutionary attitude of modern youth is unequivocal proof of their aptitude for a career in administration.
Revolutions are perfect incubators of bureaucrats.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 141

#781

“Purity,” “poetry,” “authenticity,” “dignity,” are the key words in today’s technical vocabulary to speak about any pornographic story.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 141

#780

The contemporary anthropologist, under democrats' severe gaze, skips quickly over ethnic differences like over hot coals.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 140

#779

The most interesting chapter of sociology is yet to be written: that which studies the bodily repercussions of social events.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 140

#778

Men are less equal than they say and more equal than they think.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 140

#777

Vulgarity is born when authenticity is lost.
Authenticity is lost when we search for it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 140

#776

The common man often has a personality in everyday dealings.
But the effort to express it transforms him into an exponent of fashionable clichés.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 140

#775

Each day I expect less and less to meet somebody who does not nurse the certainty of knowing how the world’s ills might be cured.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 140

#774

Nobody scorns yesterday’s foolishness as much as today’s fool does.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 139

#773

Catholics have lost even the endearing ability to sin without arguing that sin does not exist.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 139

#772

Nothing is more difficult than to comprehend another’s incomprehension.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 139

#771

God does not ask for our “cooperation,” but for our humility.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 139

#770

The pornographic novel will always miscarry, because copulation is not an act of the individual, but an activity of the species.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 139

#769

My brothers? Yes. My equals? No.
Because there are older and younger brothers.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 139

#768

For the fool, only those behaviors which conform to the latest fashionable theory in psychology are authentic.
The fool, upon observing himself, always views himself as corroborating experimentally whatever stupidity he presumes to be scientific.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 139

#767

The reactionary today is merely a traveler who suffers shipwreck with dignity.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 138

#766

Just as in our society the dregs of society triumph, so too in our literature the dregs of the soul triumph.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 138

#765

The historian’s task consists less in explaining what happened than in making understood how the contemporary understood what happened to him.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 138

#764

In societies where everybody believes they are equal, the inevitable superiority of a few makes the rest feel like failures.
Inversely, in societies where inequality is the norm, each person settles into his own distinct place, without feeling the urge, nor even conceiving the possibility, of comparing himself to others.
Only a hierarchical structure is compassionate towards the mediocre and the meek.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 138

#763

We should respect the eminent individual whom the people respect, even when he does not deserve it, in order not to disrespect the notion of respect.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 138

#762

The revolutionary is, basically, a man who does not suspect that humanity can commit a crime against itself.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 137

#761

To interpret certain men, sociology is enough.
Psychology is overkill.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 137

#760

With good humor and pessimism it is not possible to be either wrong or bored.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 137

#759

The people never believe that whoever speaks emphatically speaks folly.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 137

#758

No party, sect, or religion should trust those who know the reasons for which they join.
All authentic allegiance—in religion, politics, or love—precedes deduction.
The traitor has always chosen rationally the party he betrays.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 137

#757

Not having gotten men to practice what she teaches, the contemporary Church has resolved to teach what they practice.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 136

#756

In order to distract the people while they exploit it, stupid despots choose circus fights, whereas the astute despot prefers electoral fights.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 136

#755

The mob only believes it is thinking freely when its reason surrenders itself into the hands of collective enthusiasms.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 136

#754

The obedience of the Catholic has been distorted into an unlimited docility to all the winds of the world.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 136

#753

The crisis of Christianity today has been provoked not by science, nor by history, but by the new means of communication.
Religious progressivism is the task of adapting Christian doctrines to the opinions sponsored by news agencies and publicity agents.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 136

#752

The grandiloquence of theories of aesthetics increases with the mediocrity of the works, like that of orators with the decadence of their country.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 136

#751

Contemporary painting has more enthusiasts than contemporary literature, because a picture can be seen in two seconds of boredom, whereas a book cannot be read in less than two hours of tedium.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 135

#750

The Latin American intellectual has to search for problems for the solutions he imports.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 135

#749

There is nobody who does not suddenly discover the importance of virtues he scorns.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 135

#748

To complicate is man’s highest prerogative.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 135

#747

A philosophy that avoids the problem of evil is a fairy tale for gullible children.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 135

#746

An honest conviction does not reject the possibility of being wrong; it simply does not conceive the probability of being wrong.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 135

#745

A man is intelligent if what seems easy to everybody else seems difficult to him.
The number of audacious solutions a politician proposes increases with the stupidity of the listeners.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 135

#744

To mature is to see increase the number of things about which it seems grotesque to give an opinion, for or against.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 134

#743

The Church, when she flung the doors wide open, wished to make it easier for those outside to enter, without thinking that she actually made it easier for those inside to leave.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 134

#742

Contemporaries respect tedious books when they are pretentious and pedantic.
Posterity laughs at those crumbling idols, in order to venerate, of course, the analogous sham saints of their time.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 134

#741

The death of God is an interesting opinion, but one that does not affect God.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 134

#740

Amusing books shame the illiterate.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 134

#739

In order to convince our interlocutors, it is often necessary to invent contemptible, deceitful, ridiculous arguments.
Whoever respects his neighbor fails as an apostle.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 134

#738

When their religious depth disappears, things are reduced to a surface without density where nothingness shows through.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 134

#737

For two centuries the people has borne the burden not only of those who exploit it, but also of those who liberate it.
Its back is buckling under the double weight.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 133

#736

Primitive man transforms objects into subjects; modern man transforms subjects into objects.
We can suppose that the former deceives himself, but we know with certainty that the latter is wrong.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 133

#735

Modern society neglects man’s basic problems, since it barely has time to attend to those to which it gives rise.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 133

#734

There are only instants.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 133

#733

When individuality withers, sociology flourishes.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 133

#732

Modern psychology renounced introspection, not so much to obtain more exact results as to obtain less disquieting results.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 133

#731

Statistics are the tool of the man who renounces understanding in favor of manipulation.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 133

#730

Revolutionary opinions are the only career, in contemporary society, which assures a respectable, lucrative, and peaceful position in society.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 132

#729

A progressive defends Progress by saying that it exists.
The murderer also exists, and the judge condemns him.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 132

#728

It is not so much that the modern mentality denies the existence of God as that it does not succeed in giving meaning to the term.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 132

#727

The poor really only hate stupid wealth.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 132

#726

No one rebels against authority, but only against those who usurp it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 132

#725

Politics is not the art of imposing the best solutions, but of blocking the worst.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 132

#724

Modern conflicts originate less in the intention to conquer the enemy than in the desire to suppress conflict.
Booty, ideology, or adventure has motivated fewer wars in our time than the idyllic dream of peace.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 132

#723

Journalism is writing exclusively for others.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 131

#722

Intentional, systematic originality is mediocrity’s contemporary uniform.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 131

#721

The individual seeks out the heat of the crowd, in this century, to protect himself against the cold emanating from the corpse of the world.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 131

#720

In order not to think of the world which science describes, man gets drunk on technology.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 131

#719

Love of poverty is Christian, but adulation of the poor is a mere electioneering tactic.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 131

#718

Men can be divided between those who insist on taking advantage of today’s injustices and those who long to take advantage of tomorrow’s.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 131

#717

The leftist Catholic is correct in discovering in the bourgeois the rich man of the parable, but is mistaken in identifying the militant proletariat with the poor of the Gospel.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 131

#716

The reactionary invented the dialogue upon observing differences among men and the variety of their intentions.
The democrat engages in a monologue, because humanity expresses itself through his mouth.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 130

#715

The three hypostases of egoism are: individualism, nationalism, collectivism.
The democratic trinity.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 130

#714

Fools used to attack the Church; now they reform her.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 130

#713

When they die, aristocracies explode; democracies deflate.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 130

#712

A cultured man is someone for whom nothing lacks interest and almost everything lacks importance.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 130

#711

The modern Christian feels professionally obligated to act jovially and jokingly, to show his teeth in a cheerful grin, to profess a slavering friendliness, in order to prove to the unbeliever that Christianity is not a “somber” religion, a “pessimistic” doctrine, an “ascetic” morality.
The progressive Christian shakes our hand with the wide grin of a politician running for office.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 130

#710

To be Christian, in accordance with the latest fashion, consists less in repenting of our sins than in repenting of our Christianity.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 129

#709

Impartiality is the child of laziness and fear.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 129

#708

Our society insists on electing its rulers so that an accident of birth, or the whim of a monarch, will not suddenly deliver power into the hands of an intelligent man.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 129

#707

The struggle against disorder is nobler than order itself.
The man who is master of himself is not as magnanimous as the man who suppresses the insurrection of his soul. The deepest silence is that of a terrified crowd.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 129

#706

Three persons in our age make it their profession to detest the bourgeoisie:
the intellectual—that typical representative of the bourgeoisie;
the communist—that faithful executor of bourgeois intentions and ideals;
the progressive clergyman—that final triumph of the bourgeois mind over the Christian soul.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 129

#705

Doctrinaire individualism is dangerous not because it produces individuals, but because it suppresses them.
The product of the doctrinaire individualism of the 19th century is the mass man of the 20th century.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 128

#704

The gods punish not the pursuit of happiness but the ambition to forge it with our own hands.
The only licit desire is for something gratuitous, for something which depends on nothing in us. The mere trace of an angel resting for an instant upon the dust of our heart.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 128

#703

The state of tension between social classes, a constant structural phenomenon, metamorphoses into class warfare only when a political class uses it as a tool for demagoguery.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 128

#702

When today we hear someone exclaim: “very civilized!” “very humane!”, there can be no doubt: we are dealing with abject stupidity.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 128

#701

The post-conciliar Church seeks to draw people into the “fold” by translating the commonplaces of contemporary journalism into the insipid jargon of the Vatican chancery.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 128

#700

Many people love man only so they can forget God with an easy conscience.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 127

#699

In order to be able to ally himself with the Communist, the leftist Catholic asserts that Marxism merely criticizes Christianity’s compromises with the bourgeoisie, when it is Christianity’s essence which Marxism condemns.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 127

#698

The modern Christian does not ask God to forgive him, but to admit that sin does not exist.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 127

#697

It is not rare to find French historians for whom the history of the world is an episode in the history of France.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 127

#696

The virtual admirer is what corrupts prose.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 127

#695

The taste of the masses is characterized not by their antipathy to the excellent, but by the passivity with which they enjoy equally the good, the mediocre, and the bad.
The masses do not have bad taste. They simply do not have taste.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 127

#694

The anonymity of the modern city is as intolerable as the familiarity of modern customs.
Life should resemble a salon of people with good manners, where all know each other but where none hug each other.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 126

#693

Once I believe I have mastered a truth, the argument which interests me is not the one which confirms it but the one which refutes it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 126

#692

In the bosom of the Church today, “integralists” are those who do not understand that Christianity needs a new theology, and “progressives” are those who do not understand that the new theology must be Christian.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 126

#691

In this century of threats and menaces nothing is more frivolous than to occupy oneself with serious matters.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 126

#690

When a commonplace impresses us, we believe we have an idea of our own.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 126

#689

To meditate is to converse with someone who is dead.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 126

#688

Liberty, for the democrat, consists not in being able to say everything he thinks, but in not having to think about everything he says.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 126

#687

The philosophies which the public knows and values are strings of vulgarities attributed to illustrious names.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 125

#686

Nobody who knows himself can absolve himself.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 125

#685

The spectacle of injured vanity is grotesque when the vanity is another’s and repugnant when it is ours.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 125

#684

Only because He commanded us to love men do the modern clergy resign themselves to believing in the divinity of Jesus; whereas, in truth, it is only because we believe in the divinity of Jesus that we resign ourselves to loving men.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 125

#683

The only intelligence without prejudices is one that knows which it has.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 125

#682

The progressive clergy excoriate the “ghetto mentality” of the old Christian today.
Those clergy prefer the commercial and financial activity of the modern Jew to the ghetto where Israel’s faithfulness flourished.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 125

#681

It is enough at times that a society suppress a custom it assumes is absurd for a sudden catastrophe to show it its error.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 125

#680

Marxism announces that it will replace the governance of persons with the administration of property.
Unfortunately, Marxism teaches that the governance of persons consists of the administration of property.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 124

#679

Man lives from the disorder of his heart and dies from the order which life establishes in it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 124

#678

All peace is bought with vile acts.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 124

#677

None of us finds it difficult to love the neighbor who seems inferior to us.
But to love someone we know is superior is another thing.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 124

#676

In finding out what an intelligent man said, it is customary only to listen to the fool who mimics him.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 124

#675

When we think that a writer’s “soul” interests us, it is merely because we are calling his talent “soul.”

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 124

#674

Those who believe in the “Truth” limit their readings to the popular errors of the day.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 124

#673

There is no need to expect anything from anyone, nor to disdain anything from anyone.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 123

#672

There are two symmetrical forms of barbarism: peoples who have nothing but customs and peoples who respect nothing but laws.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 123

#671

“Objective vision” is not vision without prejudices, but vision subjected to the prejudices of others.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 123

#670

To show the unstable soul that we understand his problem is to make it insoluble.
A dumb look dissolves anxieties.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 123

#669

Whoever cites an author shows that he was incapable of assimilating him.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 123

#668

Destructions and reconstructions, in history, have known authors.
Constructions are anonymous.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 123

#667

The object of bad taste is manufactured where social prestige makes people acquire objects which give no pleasure to those who buy them.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 123

#666

Coherence and obviousness are mutually exclusive.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 122

#665

Everybody feels superior to what he does, because he believes he is superior to what he is.
Nobody believes he is the little that he really is.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 122

#664

Nobody finds himself by searching merely for himself.
Personality is born out of conflict with a norm.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 122

#663

A man is intelligent only if he is not afraid to agree with fools.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 122

#662

Cervantes is guilty of the insipidity of Spanish Cervantes criticism because he bequeathed an ironic book to a people without irony.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 122

#661

For the Marxist, rebelliousness in non-Communist societies is a sociological fact and in Communist society a merely psychological fact.
In the former the “exploited” rebel, in the latter “traitors” reveal themselves.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 122

#660

Europe, properly speaking, consists of those countries educated by feudalism.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 122

#659

Liberty lasts only so long as the state functions amid the indifference of its citizens.
Despotism threatens when the citizen agitates for or against his government.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 121

#658

The three enemies of literature are: journalism, sociology, ethics.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 121

#657

The new catechists profess that Progress is the modern incarnation of hope.
But Progress is not hope emerging, but the dying echo of hope already vanished.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 121

#656

An aristocratic society is one where the desire for personal perfection is the animating spirit of the social institutions.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 121

#655

Ideas tyrannize the man who has but few.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 121

#654

To mature is to transform an increasing number of commonplaces into authentic spiritual experience.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 121

#653

Whoever acquires experience in politics trusts only in the classic maxim: do not do today what you can leave for tomorrow.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 121

#652

A man is wise not so much because he says the truth but because he who knows the exact scope of what he says.
Because he does not believe he is saying anything more than what he is saying.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 120

#651

Art educates no one but the artist.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 120

#650

In no previous age did the arts and letters enjoy greater popularity than in ours. Arts and letters have invaded the school, the press, and the almanacs.
No other age, however, has produced such ugly objects, nor dreamed such coarse dreams, nor adopted such sordid ideas.
It is said that the public is better educated. But one does not notice.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 120

#649

Man can construct machines capable of virtually everything.
Except of having self-consciousness.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 120

#648

It is not the heavenly city of the Apocalypse which keeps the progressive Catholic awake, but the garden-city.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 120

#647

The contemporary artist’s ambition is for society to repudiate him and the press to praise him.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 120

#646

There is no stupid idea which modern man is not capable of believing, as long as he avoids believing in Christ.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 120

#645

We feel the same way about an intelligent man who becomes a Marxist as an unbeliever feels about a pretty girl who enters the convent.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 119

#644

Good manners, in the end, are nothing but the way in which respect is expressed.
Since respect, in its turn, is a feeling inspired by the presence of an admitted superior, wherever hierarchies are absent—real or fictitious, but revered—good manners die out.
Rudeness is a democratic product.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 119

#643

Without dignity, without sobriety, without refined manners, there is no prose that fully satisfies.
We demand of the book we read not just talent, but also good breeding.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 119

#642

Fantasy exploits the discoveries of the imagination.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 119

#641

Nothing is more repugnant than what the fool calls “harmonious and balanced sexual activity.”
Hygienic and methodical sexuality is the only perversion cursed by both demons and angels.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 119

#640

As poor and needy as it may be, every life has moments worthy of eternity.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 118

#639

Modern artists are so ambitious to differ from one another that that very same ambition groups them together into a single species.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 118

#638

The future form of the verb is the imbecile’s favorite tense.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 118

#637

“Progress,” “Democracy,” the “classless Society,” excite the crowd, but leave the Muses cold and disagreeable.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 118

#636

Contemplated in light of our sorrow or our happiness, of our enthusiasm or our disdain, the world displays a texture so subtle, an essence so fine, that every intellectual vision, compared to that vision of the sentiments, barely seems like clever vulgarity.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 118

#635

A man is wise if he has no ambition for anything but lives as if he had an ambition for everything.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 118

#634

The goals of all ambition are vain and their exercise harmful.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 117

#633

A simple comma at times distinguishes a trivial remark from an idea.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 117

#632

Men disagree less because they think differently than because they do not think.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 117

#631

Rulers who represent only a minority have to invent civilization in order not to perish.
The delegates of a majority, on the other hand, can be vulgar, rude, cruel, with impunity.
The greater the majority that supports him, the less cautious the ruler is, the less tolerant, the less respectful of human diversity.
When rulers deem themselves governors of all humanity, terror is near.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 117

#630

There are people who admit, without shame, that they “study” literature.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 117

#629

Triviality never lies in what is felt, but in what is said.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 116

#628

The regions of the soul least understood are always the most densely populated.
The most daring explorers of the soul disembark in urban areas.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 116

#627

The majority of men have no right to give their opinion, but only to listen.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 116

#626

The subconscious fascinates the modern mentality.
Because there it can establish its favorite stupidities as irrefutable hypotheses.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 116

#625

God is a nuisance for modern man.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 116

#624

The future impassions those who believe in the efficacy of the will, whereas the past fascinates those who recognize the impotence of human endeavors.
What man aims for is always boring, but what he attains sometimes astonishes us.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 116

#623

The ambitious man’s tactical stupidity threatens to become authentic stupidity.
The senile democrat’s mind contains nothing but ideas for campaign speeches.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 115

#622

The upper class in society is the class for which economic activity is a means, the middle class that for which it is an end.
The bourgeois does not aspire to be rich, but to be richer.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 115

#621

In vain does the old man adopt the opinions of a young man to make others doubt his old age.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 115

#620

The history of these Latin American republics should be written without disdain but with irony.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 115

#619

Since the authentic work of art is obviously original, the cultural illiterate imagines that the original work is necessarily a work of art.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 115

#618

Every individual with “ideals” is a potential murderer.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 115

#617

The calculations of intelligent men tend to fail because they forget the fool, those of fools because they forget the intelligent man.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 114

#616

The succession of generations is the vehicle, but not the motor of history.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 114

#615

We are in the habit of calling moral improvement our failure to realize that we have switched vices.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 114

#614

The enemies of the modern world, in the 19th century, could trust in the future.
In this century there only remains bare nostalgia for the past.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 114

#613

The explanation for religious experience is not to be found in psychology manuals.
It is in the Church’s dogmas.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 114

#612

All satisfaction is a form of forgetfulness.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 114

#611

Man is nothing but the spectator of his impotence.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 114

#610

In an egalitarian society neither the magnanimous nor the humble fit in; there is only room for pretentious virtues.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 114

#609

“Intuition” is the perception of the invisible, just as “perception” is the intuition of the visible.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 113

#608

In the social sciences one generally weighs, counts, and measures, to avoid having to think.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 113

#607

Rather than a Christian, perhaps I am a pagan who believes in Christ.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 113

#606

The history of art is the history of its materials, its techniques, its themes, its social conditions, its psychological motives, or its set of intellectual problems, but never the history of beauty.
A value has no history.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 113

#605

Whoever does not understand that two perfectly contrary attitudes can both be perfectly justified ought not to engage in criticism.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 113

#604

The loneliness of modern man in the universe is the loneliness of a master among silent slaves.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 113

#603

The modern tragedy is not the tragedy of reason vanquished, but of reason triumphant.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 113

#602

No period is a transition period.
Every age is an absolute that devours itself.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 112

#601

Progress ages badly.
Each generation brings a new model of progressivism and discards with contempt the previous model.
Nothing is more grotesque than yesterday’s progressive.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 112

#600

The leftist is so worried about the problems of the 19th century that he does not worry about the problems of the 20th century.
The problems raised by the industrialization of society prevent him from seeing the problems raised by industrialized society.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 112

#599

Vulgarity consists as much in disrespecting what deserves respect as in respecting what does not deserve it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 112

#598

A just society would be lacking in interest.
The discrepancy between the individual and the position he occupies is what makes history interesting.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 112

#597

The contemporary Christian is not sorry that nobody else agrees with him, but that he does not agree with everybody else.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 112

#596

Only the imbecile never feels like he is fighting on his enemies’ side.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 111

#595

Nothing that happens is necessary, but everything becomes necessary once it has happened.
Everything has a cause, but every cause has a virtual multitude of effects.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 111

#594

The true aristocrat is the man who has an interior life. Whatever his origin, his rank, or his fortune.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 111

#593

Individuals interest the modern historian less than their circumstances.
A reflection of the current confusion: the way of life matters more than the quality of the one who lives.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 111

#592

Indifference to art is betrayed by the pompous solemnity of the homage often rendered it.
True love remains silent or mocks.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 111

#591

The correct use of freedom can consist in embracing a destiny, but my freedom consists in being able to refuse to do that.
The right to fail is an important right of man.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 111

#590

The crowd calls no actions intelligent except actions of the intellect in the service of instinct.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 110

#589

Whoever feels he is the spokesman of public opinion has been enslaved.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 110

#588

The fool is scandalized and laughs when he notices that philosophers contradict each other.
It is difficult to make the fool understand that philosophy is precisely that: the art of contradicting each other without canceling each other out.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 110

#587

The believer knows how to doubt; the unbeliever does not know how to believe.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 110

#586

In its desire to gain the upper hand over democratic humanitarianism, modern Catholicism summarizes the two great commandments of the Gospel thus: You shall love your neighbor above all things.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 110

#585

For modern man catastrophes are not a lesson, but insults from the universe.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 110

#584

The only antidote to envy, in vulgar souls, is the conceit of believing that they have nothing to envy.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 110

#583

Each act of resignation is a brief agony.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 109

#582

We always prefer relief that exacerbates over a remedy that cures.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 109

#581

As a new problem is born out of a problem solved, wisdom consists not in solving problems but in taming them.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 109

#580

Fleeing does not protect against tedium.
To save ourselves, it is necessary to domesticate that flabby, lumbering beast.
In tedium freely assumed bloom the noblest things.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 109